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The Rights of Man
The Rights of Man
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Language: English
By Thomas Paine
1779 - 1792
TABLE OF CONTENTS
* Editor's Introduction
* Dedication to George Washington
* Preface to the English Edition
* Preface to the French Edition
* Rights of Man
* Miscellaneous Chapter
* Conclusion
* Appendix
* Notes
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.
WHEN Thomas Paine sailed from America for France, in April, 1787, he was
perhaps as happy a man as any in the world. His most intimate friend,
Jefferson, was Minister at Paris, and his friend Lafayette was the idol
of France. His fame had preceded him, and he at once became, in Paris,
the centre of the same circle of savants and philosophers that had
surrounded Franklin. His main reason for proceeding at once to Paris was
that he might submit to the Academy of Sciences his invention of an iron
bridge, and with its favorable verdict he came to England, in September.
He at once went to his aged mother at Thetford, leaving with a publisher
(Ridgway), his "Prospects on the Rubicon." He next made arrangements to
patent his bridge, and to construct at Rotherham the large model of it
exhibited on Paddington Green, London. He was welcomed in England by
leading statesmen, such as Lansdowne and Fox, and above all by Edmund
Burke, who for some time had him as a guest at Beaconsfield, and drove
him about in various parts of the country. He had not the slightest
revolutionary purpose, either as regarded England or France. Towards
Louis XVI. he felt only gratitude for the services he had rendered
America, and towards George III. he felt no animosity whatever. His four
months' sojourn in Paris had convinced him that there was approaching a
reform of that country after the American model, except that the Crown
would be preserved, a compromise he approved, provided the throne should
not be hereditary. Events in France travelled more swiftly than he had
anticipated, and Paine was summoned by Lafayette, Condorcet, and others,
as an adviser in the formation of a new constitution.
Such was the situation immediately preceding the political and literary
duel between Paine and Burke, which in the event turned out a tremendous
war between Royalism and Republicanism in Europe. Paine was, both in
France and in England, the inspirer of moderate counsels. Samuel Rogers
relates that in early life he dined at a friend's house in London
with Thomas Paine, when one of the toasts given was the "memory of
Joshua,"--in allusion to the Hebrew leader's conquest of the kings of
Canaan, and execution of them. Paine observed that he would not treat
kings like Joshua. "I 'm of the Scotch parson's opinion," he said,
"when he prayed against Louis XIV.--`Lord, shake him over the mouth of
hell, but don't let him drop!'" Paine then gave as his toast, "The
Republic of the World,"--which Samuel Rogers, aged twenty-nine, noted
as a sublime idea. This was Paine's faith and hope, and with it he
confronted the revolutionary storms which presently burst over France
and England.
Soon after appeared Burke's "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs." In
this Burke quoted a good deal from "Rights of Man," but replied to it
only with exclamation points, saying that the only answer such ideas
merited was "criminal justice." Paine's Part Second followed, published
February 17, 1792. In Part First Paine had mentioned a rumor that Burke
was a masked pensioner (a charge that will be noticed in connection with
its detailed statement in a further publication); and as Burke had
been formerly arraigned in Parliament, while Paymaster, for a very
questionable proceeding, this charge no doubt hurt a good deal. Although
the government did not follow Burke's suggestion of a prosecution
at that time, there is little doubt that it was he who induced the
prosecution of Part Second. Before the trial came on, December 18, 1792,
Paine was occupying his seat in the French Convention, and could only be
outlawed.
From the preceding chapter it will be seen that Part Second of "Rights
of Man" was begun by Paine in the spring of 1791. At the close of that
year, or early in 1792, he took up his abode with his friend Thomas
"Clio" Rickman, at No. 7 Upper Marylebone Street. Rickman was a radical
publisher; the house remains still a book-binding establishment, and
seems little changed since Paine therein revised the proofs of Part
Second on a table which Rickman marked with a plate, and which is now in
possession of Mr. Edward Truelove. As the plate states, Paine wrote on
the same table other works which appeared in England in 1792.
RIGHTS OF MAN
By Thomas Paine
DEDICATION
George Washington
Sir,
Sir,
Your much obliged, and
Thomas Paine
From the part Mr. Burke took in the American Revolution, it was natural
that I should consider him a friend to mankind; and as our acquaintance
commenced on that ground, it would have been more agreeable to me to
have had cause to continue in that opinion than to change it.
At the time Mr. Burke made his violent speech last winter in the English
Parliament against the French Revolution and the National Assembly, I
was in Paris, and had written to him but a short time before to inform
him how prosperously matters were going on. Soon after this I saw his
advertisement of the Pamphlet he intended to publish: As the attack
was to be made in a language but little studied, and less understood in
France, and as everything suffers by translation, I promised some of
the friends of the Revolution in that country that whenever Mr. Burke's
Pamphlet came forth, I would answer it. This appeared to me the more
necessary to be done, when I saw the flagrant misrepresentations which
Mr. Burke's Pamphlet contains; and that while it is an outrageous
abuse on the French Revolution, and the principles of Liberty, it is an
imposition on the rest of the world.
I had seen enough of the miseries of war, to wish it might never more
have existence in the world, and that some other mode might be found
out to settle the differences that should occasionally arise in the
neighbourhood of nations. This certainly might be done if Courts were
disposed to set honesty about it, or if countries were enlightened
enough not to be made the dupes of Courts. The people of America had
been bred up in the same prejudices against France, which at that time
characterised the people of England; but experience and an acquaintance
with the French Nation have most effectually shown to the Americans the
falsehood of those prejudices; and I do not believe that a more cordial
and confidential intercourse exists between any two countries than
between America and France.
I put this letter into the hands of Mr. Burke almost three years ago,
and left it with him, where it still remains; hoping, and at the same
time naturally expecting, from the opinion I had conceived of him, that
he would find some opportunity of making good use of it, for the purpose
of removing those errors and prejudices which two neighbouring nations,
from the want of knowing each other, had entertained, to the injury of
both.
When the French Revolution broke out, it certainly afforded to Mr. Burke
an opportunity of doing some good, had he been disposed to it; instead
of which, no sooner did he see the old prejudices wearing away, than he
immediately began sowing the seeds of a new inveteracy, as if he were
afraid that England and France would cease to be enemies. That there are
men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the
quarrels of Nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who
are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow
discord and cultivate prejudices between Nations, it becomes the more
unpardonable.
Thomas Paine
The cause of the French people is that of all Europe, or rather of the
whole world; but the governments of all those countries are by no means
favorable to it. It is important that we should never lose sight of this
distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments;
especially not the English people with its government.
To be convinced that the voice of truth has been stifled in England, the
world needs only to be told that the government regards and prosecutes
as a libel that which it should protect.*[1] This outrage on morality is
called law, and judges are found wicked enough to inflict penalties on
truth.
RIGHTS OF MAN. PART THE FIRST BEING AN ANSWER TO MR. BURKE'S ATTACK ON
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Among the incivilities by which nations or individuals provoke and
irritate each other, Mr. Burke's pamphlet on the French Revolution is an
extraordinary instance. Neither the People of France, nor the National
Assembly, were troubling themselves about the affairs of England, or
the English Parliament; and that Mr. Burke should commence an unprovoked
attack upon them, both in Parliament and in public, is a conduct that
cannot be pardoned on the score of manners, nor justified on that of
policy.
Hitherto Mr. Burke has been mistaken and disappointed in the opinions
he had formed of the affairs of France; but such is the ingenuity of his
hope, or the malignancy of his despair, that it furnishes him with new
pretences to go on. There was a time when it was impossible to make Mr.
Burke believe there would be any Revolution in France. His opinion then
was, that the French had neither spirit to undertake it nor fortitude to
support it; and now that there is one, he seeks an escape by condemning
it.
Dr. Price had preached a sermon on the 4th of November, 1789, being
the anniversary of what is called in England the Revolution, which took
place 1688. Mr. Burke, speaking of this sermon, says: "The political
Divine proceeds dogmatically to assert, that by the principles of
the Revolution, the people of England have acquired three fundamental
rights:
Dr. Price does not say that the right to do these things exists in this
or in that person, or in this or in that description of persons, but
that it exists in the whole; that it is a right resident in the nation.
Mr. Burke, on the contrary, denies that such a right exists in the
nation, either in whole or in part, or that it exists anywhere; and,
what is still more strange and marvellous, he says: "that the people
of England utterly disclaim such a right, and that they will resist
the practical assertion of it with their lives and fortunes." That men
should take up arms and spend their lives and fortunes, not to maintain
their rights, but to maintain they have not rights, is an entirely new
species of discovery, and suited to the paradoxical genius of Mr. Burke.
The method which Mr. Burke takes to prove that the people of England
have no such rights, and that such rights do not now exist in the
nation, either in whole or in part, or anywhere at all, is of the same
marvellous and monstrous kind with what he has already said; for his
arguments are that the persons, or the generation of persons, in whom
they did exist, are dead, and with them the right is dead also. To prove
this, he quotes a declaration made by Parliament about a hundred years
ago, to William and Mary, in these words: "The Lords Spiritual and
Temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of the people aforesaid" (meaning
the people of England then living) "most humbly and faithfully submit
themselves, their heirs and posterities, for Ever." He quotes a clause
of another Act of Parliament made in the same reign, the terms of which
he says, "bind us" (meaning the people of their day), "our heirs and our
posterity, to them, their heirs and posterity, to the end of time."
As Mr. Burke occasionally applies the poison drawn from his horrid
principles, not only to the English nation, but to the French Revolution
and the National Assembly, and charges that august, illuminated and
illuminating body of men with the epithet of usurpers, I shall, sans
ceremonie, place another system of principles in opposition to his.
I am not contending for nor against any form of government, nor for nor
against any party, here or elsewhere. That which a whole nation chooses
to do it has a right to do. Mr. Burke says, No. Where, then, does the
right exist? I am contending for the rights of the living, and against
their being willed away and controlled and contracted for by the
manuscript assumed authority of the dead, and Mr. Burke is contending
for the authority of the dead over the rights and freedom of the living.
There was a time when kings disposed of their crowns by will upon their
death-beds, and consigned the people, like beasts of the field, to
whatever successor they appointed. This is now so exploded as scarcely
to be remembered, and so monstrous as hardly to be believed. But the
Parliamentary clauses upon which Mr. Burke builds his political church
are of the same nature.
Those who have quitted the world, and those who have not yet arrived
at it, are as remote from each other as the utmost stretch of mortal
imagination can conceive. What possible obligation, then, can exist
between them--what rule or principle can be laid down that of two
nonentities, the one out of existence and the other not in, and who
never can meet in this world, the one should control the other to the
end of time?
But Mr. Burke has done some service--not to his cause, but to his
country--by bringing those clauses into public view. They serve to
demonstrate how necessary it is at all times to watch against the
attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
It is somewhat extraordinary that the offence for which James II. was
expelled, that of setting up power by assumption, should be re-acted,
under another shape and form, by the Parliament that expelled him. It
shows that the Rights of Man were but imperfectly understood at the
Revolution, for certain it is that the right which that Parliament set
up by assumption (for by the delegation it had not, and could not
have it, because none could give it) over the persons and freedom of
posterity for ever was of the same tyrannical unfounded kind which James
attempted to set up over the Parliament and the nation, and for which he
was expelled. The only difference is (for in principle they differ not)
that the one was an usurper over living, and the other over the unborn;
and as the one has no better authority to stand upon than the other,
both of them must be equally null and void, and of no effect.
From what, or from whence, does Mr. Burke prove the right of any human
power to bind posterity for ever? He has produced his clauses, but he
must produce also his proofs that such a right existed, and show how it
existed. If it ever existed it must now exist, for whatever appertains
to the nature of man cannot be annihilated by man. It is the nature of
man to die, and he will continue to die as long as he continues to be
born. But Mr. Burke has set up a sort of political Adam, in whom all
posterity are bound for ever. He must, therefore, prove that his Adam
possessed such a power, or such a right.
The weaker any cord is, the less will it bear to be stretched, and the
worse is the policy to stretch it, unless it is intended to break it.
Had anyone proposed the overthrow of Mr. Burke's positions, he would
have proceeded as Mr. Burke has done. He would have magnified the
authorities, on purpose to have called the right of them into question;
and the instant the question of right was started, the authorities must
have been given up.
But Mr. Burke's clauses have not even this qualification in their
favour. They become null, by attempting to become immortal. The nature
of them precludes consent. They destroy the right which they might have,
by grounding it on a right which they cannot have. Immortal power is
not a human right, and therefore cannot be a right of Parliament. The
Parliament of 1688 might as well have passed an act to have authorised
themselves to live for ever, as to make their authority live for ever.
All, therefore, that can be said of those clauses is that they are a
formality of words, of as much import as if those who used them had
addressed a congratulation to themselves, and in the oriental style of
antiquity had said: O Parliament, live for ever!
As almost one hundred pages of Mr. Burke's book are employed upon these
clauses, it will consequently follow that if the clauses themselves, so
far as they set up an assumed usurped dominion over posterity for ever,
are unauthoritative, and in their nature null and void; that all his
voluminous inferences, and declamation drawn therefrom, or founded
thereon, are null and void also; and on this ground I rest the matter.
We now come more particularly to the affairs of France. Mr. Burke's book
has the appearance of being written as instruction to the French nation;
but if I may permit myself the use of an extravagant metaphor, suited
to the extravagance of the case, it is darkness attempting to illuminate
light.
"We have seen," says Mr. Burke, "the French rebel against a mild and
lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult, than any people
has been known to rise against the most illegal usurper, or the most
sanguinary tyrant." This is one among a thousand other instances, in
which Mr. Burke shows that he is ignorant of the springs and principles
of the French Revolution.
It was not against Louis XVI. but against the despotic principles of
the Government, that the nation revolted. These principles had not their
origin in him, but in the original establishment, many centuries back:
and they were become too deeply rooted to be removed, and the Augean
stables of parasites and plunderers too abominably filthy to be cleansed
by anything short of a complete and universal Revolution. When it
becomes necessary to do anything, the whole heart and soul should go
into the measure, or not attempt it. That crisis was then arrived, and
there remained no choice but to act with determined vigor, or not to
act at all. The king was known to be the friend of the nation, and this
circumstance was favorable to the enterprise. Perhaps no man bred up in
the style of an absolute king, ever possessed a heart so little disposed
to the exercise of that species of power as the present King of France.
But the principles of the Government itself still remained the same. The
Monarch and the Monarchy were distinct and separate things; and it was
against the established despotism of the latter, and not against the
person or principles of the former, that the revolt commenced, and the
Revolution has been carried.
Mr. Burke does not attend to the distinction between men and principles,
and, therefore, he does not see that a revolt may take place against the
despotism of the latter, while there lies no charge of despotism against
the former.
But there are many points of view in which this Revolution may be
considered. When despotism has established itself for ages in a country,
as in France, it is not in the person of the king only that it resides.
It has the appearance of being so in show, and in nominal authority; but
it is not so in practice and in fact. It has its standard everywhere.
Every office and department has its despotism, founded upon custom and
usage. Every place has its Bastille, and every Bastille its despot.
The original hereditary despotism resident in the person of the king,
divides and sub-divides itself into a thousand shapes and forms, till
at last the whole of it is acted by deputation. This was the case in
France; and against this species of despotism, proceeding on through
an endless labyrinth of office till the source of it is scarcely
perceptible, there is no mode of redress. It strengthens itself by
assuming the appearance of duty, and tyrannizes under the pretence of
obeying.
When a man reflects on the condition which France was in from the nature
of her government, he will see other causes for revolt than those which
immediately connect themselves with the person or character of Louis
XVI. There were, if I may so express it, a thousand despotisms to be
reformed in France, which had grown up under the hereditary despotism
of the monarchy, and became so rooted as to be in a great measure
independent of it. Between the Monarchy, the Parliament, and the
Church there was a rivalship of despotism; besides the feudal despotism
operating locally, and the ministerial despotism operating everywhere.
But Mr. Burke, by considering the king as the only possible object of
a revolt, speaks as if France was a village, in which everything that
passed must be known to its commanding officer, and no oppression could
be acted but what he could immediately control. Mr. Burke might have
been in the Bastille his whole life, as well under Louis XVI. as Louis
XIV., and neither the one nor the other have known that such a man as
Burke existed. The despotic principles of the government were the same
in both reigns, though the dispositions of the men were as remote as
tyranny and benevolence.
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are
very well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce, through
the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect. But Mr. Burke should
recollect that he is writing history, and not plays, and that his
readers will expect truth, and not the spouting rant of high-toned
exclamation.
Through the whole of Mr. Burke's book I do not observe that the Bastille
is mentioned more than once, and that with a kind of implication as if
he were sorry it was pulled down, and wished it were built up again. "We
have rebuilt Newgate," says he, "and tenanted the mansion; and we have
prisons almost as strong as the Bastille for those who dare to libel the
queens of France."*[2] As to what a madman like the person called Lord
George Gordon might say, and to whom Newgate is rather a bedlam than a
prison, it is unworthy a rational consideration. It was a madman that
libelled, and that is sufficient apology; and it afforded an opportunity
for confining him, which was the thing that was wished for. But certain
it is that Mr. Burke, who does not call himself a madman (whatever other
people may do), has libelled in the most unprovoked manner, and in
the grossest style of the most vulgar abuse, the whole representative
authority of France, and yet Mr. Burke takes his seat in the British
House of Commons! From his violence and his grief, his silence on some
points and his excess on others, it is difficult not to believe that Mr.
Burke is sorry, extremely sorry, that arbitrary power, the power of the
Pope and the Bastille, are pulled down.
As Mr. Burke has passed over the whole transaction of the Bastille (and
his silence is nothing in his favour), and has entertained his readers
with refections on supposed facts distorted into real falsehoods, I will
give, since he has not, some account of the circumstances which preceded
that transaction. They will serve to show that less mischief could
scarcely have accompanied such an event when considered with the
treacherous and hostile aggravations of the enemies of the Revolution.
The mind can hardly picture to itself a more tremendous scene than what
the city of Paris exhibited at the time of taking the Bastille, and for
two days before and after, nor perceive the possibility of its quieting
so soon. At a distance this transaction has appeared only as an act of
heroism standing on itself, and the close political connection it had
with the Revolution is lost in the brilliancy of the achievement. But
we are to consider it as the strength of the parties brought man to man,
and contending for the issue. The Bastille was to be either the prize
or the prison of the assailants. The downfall of it included the idea
of the downfall of despotism, and this compounded image was become as
figuratively united as Bunyan's Doubting Castle and Giant Despair.
The National Assembly, before and at the time of taking the Bastille,
was sitting at Versailles, twelve miles distant from Paris. About a week
before the rising of the Partisans, and their taking the Bastille, it
was discovered that a plot was forming, at the head of which was
the Count D'Artois, the king's youngest brother, for demolishing the
National Assembly, seizing its members, and thereby crushing, by a coup
de main, all hopes and prospects of forming a free government. For
the sake of humanity, as well as freedom, it is well this plan did not
succeed. Examples are not wanting to show how dreadfully vindictive and
cruel are all old governments, when they are successful against what
they call a revolt.
This plan must have been some time in contemplation; because, in order
to carry it into execution, it was necessary to collect a large military
force round Paris, and cut off the communication between that city
and the National Assembly at Versailles. The troops destined for this
service were chiefly the foreign troops in the pay of France, and who,
for this particular purpose, were drawn from the distant provinces where
they were then stationed. When they were collected to the amount of
between twenty-five and thirty thousand, it was judged time to put the
plan into execution. The ministry who were then in office, and who were
friendly to the Revolution, were instantly dismissed and a new ministry
formed of those who had concerted the project, among whom was Count de
Broglio, and to his share was given the command of those troops.
The character of this man as described to me in a letter which I
communicated to Mr. Burke before he began to write his book, and from
an authority which Mr. Burke well knows was good, was that of "a
high-flying aristocrat, cool, and capable of every mischief."
While these matters were agitating, the National Assembly stood in the
most perilous and critical situation that a body of men can be supposed
to act in. They were the devoted victims, and they knew it. They had the
hearts and wishes of their country on their side, but military authority
they had none. The guards of Broglio surrounded the hall where the
Assembly sat, ready, at the word of command, to seize their persons,
as had been done the year before to the Parliament of Paris. Had the
National Assembly deserted their trust, or had they exhibited signs of
weakness or fear, their enemies had been encouraged and their country
depressed. When the situation they stood in, the cause they were engaged
in, and the crisis then ready to burst, which should determine their
personal and political fate and that of their country, and probably of
Europe, are taken into one view, none but a heart callous with prejudice
or corrupted by dependence can avoid interesting itself in their
success.
Matters being now ripe for execution, the new ministry made their
appearance in office. The reader will carry in his mind that the
Bastille was taken the 14th July; the point of time I am now speaking of
is the 12th. Immediately on the news of the change of ministry reaching
Paris, in the afternoon, all the playhouses and places of entertainment,
shops and houses, were shut up. The change of ministry was considered as
the prelude of hostilities, and the opinion was rightly founded.
The foreign troops began to advance towards the city. The Prince de
Lambesc, who commanded a body of German cavalry, approached by the Place
of Louis Xv., which connects itself with some of the streets. In his
march, he insulted and struck an old man with a sword. The French are
remarkable for their respect to old age; and the insolence with which it
appeared to be done, uniting with the general fermentation they were
in, produced a powerful effect, and a cry of "To arms! to arms!" spread
itself in a moment over the city.
Arms they had none, nor scarcely anyone who knew the use of them; but
desperate resolution, when every hope is at stake, supplies, for a
while, the want of arms. Near where the Prince de Lambesc was drawn up,
were large piles of stones collected for building the new bridge, and
with these the people attacked the cavalry. A party of French guards
upon hearing the firing, rushed from their quarters and joined the
people; and night coming on, the cavalry retreated.
The streets of Paris, being narrow, are favourable for defence, and the
loftiness of the houses, consisting of many stories, from which great
annoyance might be given, secured them against nocturnal enterprises;
and the night was spent in providing themselves with every sort of
weapon they could make or procure: guns, swords, blacksmiths' hammers,
carpenters' axes, iron crows, pikes, halberts, pitchforks, spits, clubs,
etc., etc. The incredible numbers in which they assembled the next
morning, and the still more incredible resolution they exhibited,
embarrassed and astonished their enemies. Little did the new ministry
expect such a salute. Accustomed to slavery themselves, they had no idea
that liberty was capable of such inspiration, or that a body of unarmed
citizens would dare to face the military force of thirty thousand men.
Every moment of this day was employed in collecting arms, concerting
plans, and arranging themselves into the best order which such an
instantaneous movement could afford. Broglio continued lying round the
city, but made no further advances this day, and the succeeding night
passed with as much tranquility as such a scene could possibly produce.
But defence only was not the object of the citizens. They had a cause
at stake, on which depended their freedom or their slavery. They every
moment expected an attack, or to hear of one made on the National
Assembly; and in such a situation, the most prompt measures are
sometimes the best. The object that now presented itself was the
Bastille; and the eclat of carrying such a fortress in the face of such
an army, could not fail to strike terror into the new ministry, who had
scarcely yet had time to meet. By some intercepted correspondence this
morning, it was discovered that the Mayor of Paris, M. Defflesselles,
who appeared to be in the interest of the citizens, was betraying them;
and from this discovery, there remained no doubt that Broglio would
reinforce the Bastille the ensuing evening. It was therefore necessary
to attack it that day; but before this could be done, it was first
necessary to procure a better supply of arms than they were then
possessed of.
That the Bastille was attacked with an enthusiasm of heroism, such only
as the highest animation of liberty could inspire, and carried in the
space of a few hours, is an event which the world is fully possessed of.
I am not undertaking the detail of the attack, but bringing into view
the conspiracy against the nation which provoked it, and which fell
with the Bastille. The prison to which the new ministry were dooming the
National Assembly, in addition to its being the high altar and castle of
despotism, became the proper object to begin with. This enterprise
broke up the new ministry, who began now to fly from the ruin they had
prepared for others. The troops of Broglio dispersed, and himself fled
also.
Mr. Burke has spoken a great deal about plots, but he has never once
spoken of this plot against the National Assembly, and the liberties
of the nation; and that he might not, he has passed over all the
circumstances that might throw it in his way. The exiles who have fled
from France, whose case he so much interests himself in, and from whom
he has had his lesson, fled in consequence of the miscarriage of this
plot. No plot was formed against them; they were plotting against
others; and those who fell, met, not unjustly, the punishment they
were preparing to execute. But will Mr. Burke say that if this plot,
contrived with the subtilty of an ambuscade, had succeeded, the
successful party would have restrained their wrath so soon? Let the
history of all governments answer the question.
Whom has the National Assembly brought to the scaffold? None. They
were themselves the devoted victims of this plot, and they have not
retaliated; why, then, are they charged with revenge they have not
acted? In the tremendous breaking forth of a whole people, in which all
degrees, tempers and characters are confounded, delivering themselves,
by a miracle of exertion, from the destruction meditated against them,
is it to be expected that nothing will happen? When men are sore with
the sense of oppressions, and menaced with the prospects of new ones,
is the calmness of philosophy or the palsy of insensibility to be looked
for? Mr. Burke exclaims against outrage; yet the greatest is that which
himself has committed. His book is a volume of outrage, not apologised
for by the impulse of a moment, but cherished through a space of ten
months; yet Mr. Burke had no provocation--no life, no interest, at
stake.
More of the citizens fell in this struggle than of their opponents: but
four or five persons were seized by the populace, and instantly put to
death; the Governor of the Bastille, and the Mayor of Paris, who was
detected in the act of betraying them; and afterwards Foulon, one of the
new ministry, and Berthier, his son-in-law, who had accepted the office
of intendant of Paris. Their heads were stuck upon spikes, and carried
about the city; and it is upon this mode of punishment that Mr. Burke
builds a great part of his tragic scene. Let us therefore examine how
men came by the idea of punishing in this manner.
They learn it from the governments they live under; and retaliate the
punishments they have been accustomed to behold. The heads stuck upon
spikes, which remained for years upon Temple Bar, differed nothing in
the horror of the scene from those carried about upon spikes at Paris;
yet this was done by the English Government. It may perhaps be said that
it signifies nothing to a man what is done to him after he is dead; but
it signifies much to the living; it either tortures their feelings or
hardens their hearts, and in either case it instructs them how to punish
when power falls into their hands.
Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is
their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind. In England the
punishment in certain cases is by hanging, drawing and quartering;
the heart of the sufferer is cut out and held up to the view of the
populace. In France, under the former Government, the punishments were
not less barbarous. Who does not remember the execution of Damien, torn
to pieces by horses? The effect of those cruel spectacles exhibited to
the populace is to destroy tenderness or excite revenge; and by the
base and false idea of governing men by terror, instead of reason,
they become precedents. It is over the lowest class of mankind that
government by terror is intended to operate, and it is on them that it
operates to the worst effect. They have sense enough to feel they are
the objects aimed at; and they inflict in their turn the examples of
terror they have been instructed to practise.
I give to Mr. Burke all his theatrical exaggerations for facts, and I
then ask him if they do not establish the certainty of what I here lay
down? Admitting them to be true, they show the necessity of the French
Revolution, as much as any one thing he could have asserted. These
outrages were not the effect of the principles of the Revolution, but
of the degraded mind that existed before the Revolution, and which the
Revolution is calculated to reform. Place them then to their proper
cause, and take the reproach of them to your own side.
It is the honour of the National Assembly and the city of Paris that,
during such a tremendous scene of arms and confusion, beyond the control
of all authority, they have been able, by the influence of example
and exhortation, to restrain so much. Never were more pains taken to
instruct and enlighten mankind, and to make them see that their interest
consisted in their virtue, and not in their revenge, than have been
displayed in the Revolution of France. I now proceed to make some
remarks on Mr. Burke's account of the expedition to Versailles, October
the 5th and 6th.
I can consider Mr. Burke's book in scarcely any other light than a
dramatic performance; and he must, I think, have considered it in the
same light himself, by the poetical liberties he has taken of omitting
some facts, distorting others, and making the whole machinery bend to
produce a stage effect. Of this kind is his account of the expedition to
Versailles. He begins this account by omitting the only facts which as
causes are known to be true; everything beyond these is conjecture, even
in Paris; and he then works up a tale accommodated to his own passions
and prejudices.
After all the investigations that have been made into this intricate
affair (the expedition to Versailles), it still remains enveloped in all
that kind of mystery which ever accompanies events produced more from a
concurrence of awkward circumstances than from fixed design. While the
characters of men are forming, as is always the case in revolutions,
there is a reciprocal suspicion, and a disposition to misinterpret each
other; and even parties directly opposite in principle will sometimes
concur in pushing forward the same movement with very different views,
and with the hopes of its producing very different consequences. A great
deal of this may be discovered in this embarrassed affair, and yet the
issue of the whole was what nobody had in view.
The only things certainly known are that considerable uneasiness was at
this time excited at Paris by the delay of the King in not sanctioning
and forwarding the decrees of the National Assembly, particularly that
of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the decrees of the fourth
of August, which contained the foundation principles on which the
constitution was to be erected. The kindest, and perhaps the fairest
conjecture upon this matter is, that some of the ministers intended to
make remarks and observations upon certain parts of them before they
were finally sanctioned and sent to the provinces; but be this as it
may, the enemies of the Revolution derived hope from the delay, and the
friends of the Revolution uneasiness.
During this state of suspense, the Garde du Corps, which was composed as
such regiments generally are, of persons much connected with the
Court, gave an entertainment at Versailles (October 1) to some foreign
regiments then arrived; and when the entertainment was at the height, on
a signal given, the Garde du Corps tore the national cockade from their
hats, trampled it under foot, and replaced it with a counter-cockade
prepared for the purpose. An indignity of this kind amounted to
defiance. It was like declaring war; and if men will give challenges
they must expect consequences. But all this Mr. Burke has carefully kept
out of sight. He begins his account by saying: "History will record that
on the morning of the 6th October, 1789, the King and Queen of France,
after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down under
the pledged security of public faith to indulge nature in a few hours
of respite, and troubled melancholy repose." This is neither the sober
style of history, nor the intention of it. It leaves everything to
be guessed at and mistaken. One would at least think there had been a
battle; and a battle there probably would have been had it not been
for the moderating prudence of those whom Mr. Burke involves in his
censures. By his keeping the Garde du Corps out of sight Mr. Burke has
afforded himself the dramatic licence of putting the King and Queen in
their places, as if the object of the expedition was against them. But
to return to my account this conduct of the Garde du Corps, as might
well be expected, alarmed and enraged the Partisans. The colors of
the cause, and the cause itself, were become too united to mistake the
intention of the insult, and the Partisans were determined to call
the Garde du Corps to an account. There was certainly nothing of the
cowardice of assassination in marching in the face of the day to demand
satisfaction, if such a phrase may be used, of a body of armed men who
had voluntarily given defiance. But the circumstance which serves
to throw this affair into embarrassment is, that the enemies of the
Revolution appear to have encouraged it as well as its friends. The one
hoped to prevent a civil war by checking it in time, and the other to
make one. The hopes of those opposed to the Revolution rested in making
the King of their party, and getting him from Versailles to Metz,
where they expected to collect a force and set up a standard. We have,
therefore, two different objects presenting themselves at the same time,
and to be accomplished by the same means: the one to chastise the Garde
du Corps, which was the object of the Partisans; the other to render the
confusion of such a scene an inducement to the King to set off for Metz.
On the 5th of October a very numerous body of women, and men in the
disguise of women, collected around the Hotel de Ville or town-hall at
Paris, and set off for Versailles. Their professed object was the Garde
du Corps; but prudent men readily recollect that mischief is more easily
begun than ended; and this impressed itself with the more force from the
suspicions already stated, and the irregularity of such a cavalcade.
As soon, therefore, as a sufficient force could be collected, M. de la
Fayette, by orders from the civil authority of Paris, set off after
them at the head of twenty thousand of the Paris militia. The Revolution
could derive no benefit from confusion, and its opposers might. By an
amiable and spirited manner of address he had hitherto been fortunate in
calming disquietudes, and in this he was extraordinarily successful; to
frustrate, therefore, the hopes of those who might seek to improve
this scene into a sort of justifiable necessity for the King's quitting
Versailles and withdrawing to Metz, and to prevent at the same time
the consequences that might ensue between the Garde du Corps and this
phalanx of men and women, he forwarded expresses to the King, that he
was on his march to Versailles, by the orders of the civil authority of
Paris, for the purpose of peace and protection, expressing at the same
time the necessity of restraining the Garde du Corps from firing upon
the people.*[3]
During the latter part of the time in which this confusion was acting,
the King and Queen were in public at the balcony, and neither of them
concealed for safety's sake, as Mr. Burke insinuates. Matters being thus
appeased, and tranquility restored, a general acclamation broke forth of
Le Roi a Paris--Le Roi a Paris--The King to Paris. It was the shout of
peace, and immediately accepted on the part of the King. By this measure
all future projects of trapanning the King to Metz, and setting up the
standard of opposition to the constitution, were prevented, and the
suspicions extinguished. The King and his family reached Paris in the
evening, and were congratulated on their arrival by M. Bailly, the Mayor
of Paris, in the name of the citizens. Mr. Burke, who throughout his
book confounds things, persons, and principles, as in his remarks on
M. Bailly's address, confounded time also. He censures M. Bailly for
calling it "un bon jour," a good day. Mr. Burke should have informed
himself that this scene took up the space of two days, the day on which
it began with every appearance of danger and mischief, and the day on
which it terminated without the mischiefs that threatened; and that
it is to this peaceful termination that M. Bailly alludes, and to the
arrival of the King at Paris. Not less than three hundred thousand
persons arranged themselves in the procession from Versailles to Paris,
and not an act of molestation was committed during the whole march.
We are now got at the origin of man, and at the origin of his rights.
As to the manner in which the world has been governed from that day to
this, it is no farther any concern of ours than to make a proper use of
the errors or the improvements which the history of it presents. Those
who lived an hundred or a thousand years ago, were then moderns, as we
are now. They had their ancients, and those ancients had others, and we
also shall be ancients in our turn. If the mere name of antiquity is to
govern in the affairs of life, the people who are to live an hundred or
a thousand years hence, may as well take us for a precedent, as we make
a precedent of those who lived an hundred or a thousand years ago. The
fact is, that portions of antiquity, by proving everything, establish
nothing. It is authority against authority all the way, till we come
to the divine origin of the rights of man at the creation. Here our
enquiries find a resting-place, and our reason finds a home. If a
dispute about the rights of man had arisen at the distance of an hundred
years from the creation, it is to this source of authority they must
have referred, and it is to this same source of authority that we must
now refer.
It is also to be observed that all the religions known in the world are
founded, so far as they relate to man, on the unity of man, as being all
of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man
may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only
distinctions. Nay, even the laws of governments are obliged to slide
into this principle, by making degrees to consist in crimes and not in
persons.
A few words will explain this. Natural rights are those which appertain
to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual
rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an
individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to
the natural rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to
man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for
its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but
to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases,
sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to
security and protection.
From this short review it will be easy to distinguish between that class
of natural rights which man retains after entering into society and
those which he throws into the common stock as a member of society.
The natural rights which he retains are all those in which the Power to
execute is as perfect in the individual as the right itself. Among
this class, as is before mentioned, are all the intellectual rights, or
rights of the mind; consequently religion is one of those rights. The
natural rights which are not retained, are all those in which, though
the right is perfect in the individual, the power to execute them is
defective. They answer not his purpose. A man, by natural right, has a
right to judge in his own cause; and so far as the right of the mind is
concerned, he never surrenders it. But what availeth it him to judge,
if he has not power to redress? He therefore deposits this right in the
common stock of society, and takes the ann of society, of which he is
a part, in preference and in addition to his own. Society grants him
nothing. Every man is a proprietor in society, and draws on the capital
as a matter of right.
First, That every civil right grows out of a natural right; or, in other
words, is a natural right exchanged.
Thirdly, That the power produced from the aggregate of natural rights,
imperfect in power in the individual, cannot be applied to invade the
natural rights which are retained in the individual, and in which the
power to execute is as perfect as the right itself.
First, Superstition.
Secondly, Power.
Thirdly, The common interest of society and the common rights of man.
When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature
has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and
happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern
mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and
can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.
The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his
own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other
to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments
have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right
to exist.
Mr. Burke will not, I presume, deny the position I have already
advanced--namely, that governments arise either out of the people or
over the people. The English Government is one of those which arose out
of a conquest, and not out of society, and consequently it arose over
the people; and though it has been much modified from the opportunity of
circumstances since the time of William the Conqueror, the country has
never yet regenerated itself, and is therefore without a constitution.
I readily perceive the reason why Mr. Burke declined going into the
comparison between the English and French constitutions, because he
could not but perceive, when he sat down to the task, that no such a
thing as a constitution existed on his side the question. His book
is certainly bulky enough to have contained all he could say on this
subject, and it would have been the best manner in which people could
have judged of their separate merits. Why then has he declined the only
thing that was worth while to write upon? It was the strongest ground he
could take, if the advantages were on his side, but the weakest if they
were not; and his declining to take it is either a sign that he could
not possess it or could not maintain it.
Mr. Burke said, in a speech last winter in Parliament, "that when the
National Assembly first met in three Orders (the Tiers Etat, the Clergy,
and the Noblesse), France had then a good constitution." This shows,
among numerous other instances, that Mr. Burke does not understand what
a constitution is. The persons so met were not a constitution, but a
convention, to make a constitution.
The constitution of France says that every man who pays a tax of sixty
sous per annum (2s. 6d. English) is an elector. What article will Mr.
Burke place against this? Can anything be more limited, and at the same
time more capricious, than the qualification of electors is in England?
Limited--because not one man in an hundred (I speak much within compass)
is admitted to vote. Capricious--because the lowest character that can
be supposed to exist, and who has not so much as the visible means of an
honest livelihood, is an elector in some places: while in other places,
the man who pays very large taxes, and has a known fair character, and
the farmer who rents to the amount of three or four hundred pounds a
year, with a property on that farm to three or four times that amount,
is not admitted to be an elector. Everything is out of nature, as Mr.
Burke says on another occasion, in this strange chaos, and all sorts of
follies are blended with all sorts of crimes. William the Conqueror and
his descendants parcelled out the country in this manner, and bribed
some parts of it by what they call charters to hold the other parts of
it the better subjected to their will. This is the reason why so many
of those charters abound in Cornwall; the people were averse to the
Government established at the Conquest, and the towns were garrisoned
and bribed to enslave the country. All the old charters are the badges
of this conquest, and it is from this source that the capriciousness of
election arises.
The French Constitution says that the National Assembly shall be elected
every two years. What article will Mr. Burke place against this? Why,
that the nation has no right at all in the case; that the government is
perfectly arbitrary with respect to this point; and he can quote for his
authority the precedent of a former Parliament.
The French Constitution says there shall be no game laws, that the
farmer on whose lands wild game shall be found (for it is by the produce
of his lands they are fed) shall have a right to what he can take; that
there shall be no monopolies of any kind--that all trades shall be free
and every man free to follow any occupation by which he can procure
an honest livelihood, and in any place, town, or city throughout the
nation. What will Mr. Burke say to this? In England, game is made the
property of those at whose expense it is not fed; and with respect to
monopolies, the country is cut up into monopolies. Every chartered
town is an aristocratical monopoly in itself, and the qualification of
electors proceeds out of those chartered monopolies. Is this freedom? Is
this what Mr. Burke means by a constitution?
The French Constitution says that the right of war and peace is in the
nation. Where else should it reside but in those who are to pay the
expense?
It may with reason be said that in the manner the English nation is
represented it signifies not where the right resides, whether in the
Crown or in the Parliament. War is the common harvest of all those who
participate in the division and expenditure of public money, in all
countries. It is the art of conquering at home; the object of it is an
increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes,
a pretence must be made for expenditure. In reviewing the history of the
English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded
by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not
raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.
When the question of the right of war and peace was agitating in the
National Assembly, the people of England appeared to be much interested
in the event, and highly to applaud the decision. As a principle it
applies as much to one country as another. William the Conqueror, as
a conqueror, held this power of war and peace in himself, and his
descendants have ever since claimed it under him as a right.
Although Mr. Burke has asserted the right of the Parliament at the
Revolution to bind and control the nation and posterity for ever, he
denies at the same time that the Parliament or the nation had any right
to alter what he calls the succession of the crown in anything but in
part, or by a sort of modification. By his taking this ground he throws
the case back to the Norman Conquest, and by thus running a line of
succession springing from William the Conqueror to the present day, he
makes it necessary to enquire who and what William the Conqueror was,
and where he came from, and into the origin, history and nature of what
are called prerogatives. Everything must have had a beginning, and the
fog of time and antiquity should be penetrated to discover it. Let,
then, Mr. Burke bring forward his William of Normandy, for it is to this
origin that his argument goes. It also unfortunately happens, in running
this line of succession, that another line parallel thereto presents
itself, which is that if the succession runs in the line of the
conquest, the nation runs in the line of being conquered, and it ought
to rescue itself from this reproach.
But it will perhaps be said that though the power of declaring war
descends in the heritage of the conquest, it is held in check by the
right of Parliament to withhold the supplies. It will always happen when
a thing is originally wrong that amendments do not make it right, and it
often happens that they do as much mischief one way as good the other,
and such is the case here, for if the one rashly declares war as a
matter of right, and the other peremptorily withholds the supplies as a
matter of right, the remedy becomes as bad, or worse, than the disease.
The one forces the nation to a combat, and the other ties its hands;
but the more probable issue is that the contest will end in a collusion
between the parties, and be made a screen to both.
Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. The thing is
perfectly harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the
human character, which degrades it. It reduces man into the diminutive
of man in things which are great, and the counterfeit of women in things
which are little. It talks about its fine blue ribbon like a girl, and
shows its new garter like a child. A certain writer, of some antiquity,
says: "When I was a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a
man, I put away childish things."
It is, properly, from the elevated mind of France that the folly of
titles has fallen. It has outgrown the baby clothes of Count and Duke,
and breeched itself in manhood. France has not levelled, it has exalted.
It has put down the dwarf, to set up the man. The punyism of a senseless
word like Duke, Count or Earl has ceased to please. Even those who
possessed them have disowned the gibberish, and as they outgrew the
rickets, have despised the rattle. The genuine mind of man, thirsting
for its native home, society, contemns the gewgaws that separate him
from it. Titles are like circles drawn by the magician's wand, to
contract the sphere of man's felicity. He lives immured within the
Bastille of a word, and surveys at a distance the envied life of man.
Is it, then, any wonder that titles should fall in France? Is it not a
greater wonder that they should be kept up anywhere? What are they? What
is their worth, and "what is their amount?" When we think or speak of
a Judge or a General, we associate with it the ideas of office and
character; we think of gravity in one and bravery in the other; but when
we use the word merely as a title, no ideas associate with it. Through
all the vocabulary of Adam there is not such an animal as a Duke or a
Count; neither can we connect any certain ideas with the words. Whether
they mean strength or weakness, wisdom or folly, a child or a man, or
the rider or the horse, is all equivocal. What respect then can be paid
to that which describes nothing, and which means nothing? Imagination
has given figure and character to centaurs, satyrs, and down to all
the fairy tribe; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and are a
chimerical nondescript.
If no mischief had annexed itself to the folly of titles they would not
have been worth a serious and formal destruction, such as the National
Assembly have decreed them; and this makes it necessary to enquire
farther into the nature and character of aristocracy.
In France aristocracy had one feature less in its countenance than what
it has in some other countries. It did not compose a body of hereditary
legislators. It was not "a corporation of aristocracy," for such I have
heard M. de la Fayette describe an English House of Peers. Let us then
examine the grounds upon which the French Constitution has resolved
against having such a House in France.
The French Constitution has reformed the condition of the clergy. It has
raised the income of the lower and middle classes, and taken from the
higher. None are now less than twelve hundred livres (fifty pounds
sterling), nor any higher than two or three thousand pounds. What will
Mr. Burke place against this? Hear what he says.
He says: "That the people of England can see without pain or grudging,
an archbishop precede a duke; they can see a Bishop of Durham, or a
Bishop of Winchester in possession of L10,000 a-year; and cannot see why
it is in worse hands than estates to a like amount, in the hands of this
earl or that squire." And Mr. Burke offers this as an example to France.
As to the first part, whether the archbishop precedes the duke, or the
duke the bishop, it is, I believe, to the people in general, somewhat
like Sternhold and Hopkins, or Hopkins and Sternhold; you may put which
you please first; and as I confess that I do not understand the merits
of this case, I will not contest it with Mr. Burke.
But with respect to the latter, I have something to say. Mr. Burke has
not put the case right. The comparison is out of order, by being put
between the bishop and the earl or the squire. It ought to be put
between the bishop and the curate, and then it will stand thus:--"The
people of England can see without pain or grudging, a Bishop of Durham,
or a Bishop of Winchester, in possession of ten thousand pounds a-year,
and a curate on thirty or forty pounds a-year, or less." No, sir, they
certainly do not see those things without great pain or grudging. It is
a case that applies itself to every man's sense of justice, and is one
among many that calls aloud for a constitution.
In France the cry of "the church! the church!" was repeated as often
as in Mr. Burke's book, and as loudly as when the Dissenters' Bill was
before the English Parliament; but the generality of the French clergy
were not to be deceived by this cry any longer. They knew that whatever
the pretence might be, it was they who were one of the principal objects
of it. It was the cry of the high beneficed clergy, to prevent any
regulation of income taking place between those of ten thousand pounds
a-year and the parish priest. They therefore joined their case to
those of every other oppressed class of men, and by this union obtained
redress.
But Toleration may be viewed in a much stronger light. Man worships not
himself, but his Maker; and the liberty of conscience which he claims is
not for the service of himself, but of his God. In this case, therefore,
we must necessarily have the associated idea of two things; the mortal
who renders the worship, and the Immortal Being who is worshipped.
Toleration, therefore, places itself, not between man and man, nor
between church and church, nor between one denomination of religion and
another, but between God and man; between the being who worships, and
the Being who is worshipped; and by the same act of assumed authority
which it tolerates man to pay his worship, it presumptuously and
blasphemously sets itself up to tolerate the Almighty to receive it.
Were a bill brought into any Parliament, entitled, "An Act to tolerate
or grant liberty to the Almighty to receive the worship of a Jew or
Turk," or "to prohibit the Almighty from receiving it," all men would
startle and call it blasphemy. There would be an uproar. The presumption
of toleration in religious matters would then present itself unmasked;
but the presumption is not the less because the name of "Man" only
appears to those laws, for the associated idea of the worshipper and the
worshipped cannot be separated. Who then art thou, vain dust and ashes!
by whatever name thou art called, whether a King, a Bishop, a Church,
or a State, a Parliament, or anything else, that obtrudest thine
insignificance between the soul of man and its Maker? Mind thine own
concerns. If he believes not as thou believest, it is a proof that
thou believest not as he believes, and there is no earthly power can
determine between you.
One of the continual choruses of Mr. Burke's book is "Church and State."
He does not mean some one particular church, or some one particular
state, but any church and state; and he uses the term as a general
figure to hold forth the political doctrine of always uniting the church
with the state in every country, and he censures the National Assembly
for not having done this in France. Let us bestow a few thoughts on this
subject.
All religions are in their nature kind and benign, and united with
principles of morality. They could not have made proselytes at first by
professing anything that was vicious, cruel, persecuting, or immoral.
Like everything else, they had their beginning; and they proceeded by
persuasion, exhortation, and example. How then is it that they lose
their native mildness, and become morose and intolerant?
The inquisition in Spain does not proceed from the religion originally
professed, but from this mule-animal, engendered between the church
and the state. The burnings in Smithfield proceeded from the same
heterogeneous production; and it was the regeneration of this strange
animal in England afterwards, that renewed rancour and irreligion among
the inhabitants, and that drove the people called Quakers and Dissenters
to America. Persecution is not an original feature in any religion;
but it is alway the strongly-marked feature of all law-religions, or
religions established by law. Take away the law-establishment, and
every religion re-assumes its original benignity. In America, a catholic
priest is a good citizen, a good character, and a good neighbour; an
episcopalian minister is of the same description: and this proceeds
independently of the men, from there being no law-establishment in
America.
If also we view this matter in a temporal sense, we shall see the ill
effects it has had on the prosperity of nations. The union of church and
state has impoverished Spain. The revoking the edict of Nantes drove the
silk manufacture from that country into England; and church and state
are now driving the cotton manufacture from England to America and
France. Let then Mr. Burke continue to preach his antipolitical doctrine
of Church and State. It will do some good. The National Assembly
will not follow his advice, but will benefit by his folly. It was by
observing the ill effects of it in England, that America has been warned
against it; and it is by experiencing them in France, that the National
Assembly have abolished it, and, like America, have established
Universal Right Of Conscience, And Universal Right Of Citizenship.*[7]
I will here cease the comparison with respect to the principles of the
French Constitution, and conclude this part of the subject with a few
observations on the organisation of the formal parts of the French and
English governments.
By the French Constitution the nation is always named before the king.
The third article of the declaration of rights says: "The nation is
essentially the source (or fountain) of all sovereignty." Mr. Burke
argues that in England a king is the fountain--that he is the fountain
of all honour. But as this idea is evidently descended from the conquest
I shall make no other remark upon it, than that it is the nature of
conquest to turn everything upside down; and as Mr. Burke will not be
refused the privilege of speaking twice, and as there are but two parts
in the figure, the fountain and the spout, he will be right the second
time.
The French Constitution puts the legislative before the executive, the
law before the king; la loi, le roi. This also is in the natural
order of things, because laws must have existence before they can have
execution.
The President of the National Assembly does not ask the King to grant to
the Assembly liberty of speech, as is the case with the English House
of Commons. The constitutional dignity of the National Assembly cannot
debase itself. Speech is, in the first place, one of the natural rights
of man always retained; and with respect to the National Assembly the
use of it is their duty, and the nation is their authority. They were
elected by the greatest body of men exercising the right of election
the European world ever saw. They sprung not from the filth of rotten
boroughs, nor are they the vassal representatives of aristocratical
ones. Feeling the proper dignity of their character they support it.
Their Parliamentary language, whether for or against a question, is
free, bold and manly, and extends to all the parts and circumstances of
the case. If any matter or subject respecting the executive department
or the person who presides in it (the king) comes before them it is
debated on with the spirit of men, and in the language of gentlemen; and
their answer or their address is returned in the same style. They stand
not aloof with the gaping vacuity of vulgar ignorance, nor bend with the
cringe of sycophantic insignificance. The graceful pride of truth knows
no extremes, and preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-angled
character of man.
Let us now look to the other side of the question. In the addresses
of the English Parliaments to their kings we see neither the intrepid
spirit of the old Parliaments of France, nor the serene dignity of the
present National Assembly; neither do we see in them anything of the
style of English manners, which border somewhat on bluntness. Since
then they are neither of foreign extraction, nor naturally of English
production, their origin must be sought for elsewhere, and that origin
is the Norman Conquest. They are evidently of the vassalage class of
manners, and emphatically mark the prostrate distance that exists in
no other condition of men than between the conqueror and the conquered.
That this vassalage idea and style of speaking was not got rid of even
at the Revolution of 1688, is evident from the declaration of Parliament
to William and Mary in these words: "We do most humbly and faithfully
submit ourselves, our heirs and posterities, for ever." Submission is
wholly a vassalage term, repugnant to the dignity of freedom, and an
echo of the language used at the Conquest.
But there is a truth that ought to be made known; I have had the
opportunity of seeing it; which is, that notwithstanding appearances,
there is not any description of men that despise monarchy so much as
courtiers. But they well know, that if it were seen by others, as it is
seen by them, the juggle could not be kept up; they are in the condition
of men who get their living by a show, and to whom the folly of that
show is so familiar that they ridicule it; but were the audience to be
made as wise in this respect as themselves, there would be an end to the
show and the profits with it. The difference between a republican and
a courtier with respect to monarchy, is that the one opposes monarchy,
believing it to be something; and the other laughs at it, knowing it to
be nothing.
I will here finally close this subject. I began it by remarking that Mr.
Burke had voluntarily declined going into a comparison of the English
and French Constitutions. He apologises (in page 241) for not doing it,
by saying that he had not time. Mr. Burke's book was upwards of eight
months in hand, and is extended to a volume of three hundred and
sixty-six pages. As his omission does injury to his cause, his apology
makes it worse; and men on the English side of the water will begin to
consider, whether there is not some radical defect in what is called the
English constitution, that made it necessary for Mr. Burke to suppress
the comparison, to avoid bringing it into view.
The despotism of Louis XIV., united with the gaiety of his Court, and
the gaudy ostentation of his character, had so humbled, and at the same
time so fascinated the mind of France, that the people appeared to have
lost all sense of their own dignity, in contemplating that of their
Grand Monarch; and the whole reign of Louis XV., remarkable only for
weakness and effeminacy, made no other alteration than that of spreading
a sort of lethargy over the nation, from which it showed no disposition
to rise.
The only signs which appeared to the spirit of Liberty during those
periods, are to be found in the writings of the French philosophers.
Montesquieu, President of the Parliament of Bordeaux, went as far as a
writer under a despotic government could well proceed; and being obliged
to divide himself between principle and prudence, his mind often appears
under a veil, and we ought to give him credit for more than he has
expressed.
Voltaire, who was both the flatterer and the satirist of despotism, took
another line. His forte lay in exposing and ridiculing the superstitions
which priest-craft, united with state-craft, had interwoven with
governments. It was not from the purity of his principles, or his love
of mankind (for satire and philanthropy are not naturally concordant),
but from his strong capacity of seeing folly in its true shape, and his
irresistible propensity to expose it, that he made those attacks. They
were, however, as formidable as if the motive had been virtuous; and he
merits the thanks rather than the esteem of mankind.
The writings of Quesnay, Turgot, and the friends of those authors, are
of the serious kind; but they laboured under the same disadvantage with
Montesquieu; their writings abound with moral maxims of government, but
are rather directed to economise and reform the administration of the
government, than the government itself.
But all those writings and many others had their weight; and by the
different manner in which they treated the subject of government,
Montesquieu by his judgment and knowledge of laws, Voltaire by his wit,
Rousseau and Raynal by their animation, and Quesnay and Turgot by their
moral maxims and systems of economy, readers of every class met with
something to their taste, and a spirit of political inquiry began
to diffuse itself through the nation at the time the dispute between
England and the then colonies of America broke out.
In the war which France afterwards engaged in, it is very well known
that the nation appeared to be before-hand with the French ministry.
Each of them had its view; but those views were directed to different
objects; the one sought liberty, and the other retaliation on England.
The French officers and soldiers who after this went to America, were
eventually placed in the school of Freedom, and learned the practice as
well as the principles of it by heart.
When the war closed, a vast reinforcement to the cause of Liberty spread
itself over France, by the return of the French officers and soldiers.
A knowledge of the practice was then joined to the theory; and all
that was wanting to give it real existence was opportunity. Man cannot,
properly speaking, make circumstances for his purpose, but he always has
it in his power to improve them when they occur, and this was the case
in France.
As one of the plans had thus failed, that of getting the Assembly to act
as a Parliament, the other came into view, that of recommending. On
this subject the Assembly agreed to recommend two new taxes to be
unregistered by the Parliament: the one a stamp-tax and the other a
territorial tax, or sort of land-tax. The two have been estimated
at about five millions sterling per annum. We have now to turn our
attention to the Parliaments, on whom the business was again devolving.
The Assembly of the Notables having broken up, the minister sent
the edicts for the two new taxes recommended by the Assembly to the
Parliaments to be unregistered. They of course came first before the
Parliament of Paris, who returned for answer: "that with such a revenue
as the nation then supported the name of taxes ought not to be mentioned
but for the purpose of reducing them"; and threw both the edicts
out.*[8] On this refusal the Parliament was ordered to Versailles,
where, in the usual form, the King held what under the old government
was called a Bed of justice; and the two edicts were unregistered
in presence of the Parliament by an order of State, in the manner
mentioned, earlier. On this the Parliament immediately returned to
Paris, renewed their session in form, and ordered the enregistering to
be struck out, declaring that everything done at Versailles was illegal.
All the members of the Parliament were then served with Lettres de
Cachet, and exiled to Troyes; but as they continued as inflexible in
exile as before, and as vengeance did not supply the place of taxes,
they were after a short time recalled to Paris.
The edicts were again tendered to them, and the Count D'Artois undertook
to act as representative of the King. For this purpose he came from
Versailles to Paris, in a train of procession; and the Parliament were
assembled to receive him. But show and parade had lost their influence
in France; and whatever ideas of importance he might set off with,
he had to return with those of mortification and disappointment. On
alighting from his carriage to ascend the steps of the Parliament House,
the crowd (which was numerously collected) threw out trite expressions,
saying: "This is Monsieur D'Artois, who wants more of our money to
spend." The marked disapprobation which he saw impressed him with
apprehensions, and the word Aux armes! (To arms!) was given out by the
officer of the guard who attended him. It was so loudly vociferated,
that it echoed through the avenues of the house, and produced a
temporary confusion. I was then standing in one of the apartments
through which he had to pass, and could not avoid reflecting how
wretched was the condition of a disrespected man.
After this a new subject took place: In the various debates and contests
which arose between the Court and the Parliaments on the subject of
taxes, the Parliament of Paris at last declared that although it had
been customary for Parliaments to enregister edicts for taxes as a
matter of convenience, the right belonged only to the States-General;
and that, therefore, the Parliament could no longer with propriety
continue to debate on what it had not authority to act. The King after
this came to Paris and held a meeting with the Parliament, in which he
continued from ten in the morning till about six in the evening, and, in
a manner that appeared to proceed from him as if unconsulted upon
with the Cabinet or Ministry, gave his word to the Parliament that the
States-General should be convened.
But after this another scene arose, on a ground different from all
the former. The Minister and the Cabinet were averse to calling
the States-General. They well knew that if the States-General were
assembled, themselves must fall; and as the King had not mentioned any
time, they hit on a project calculated to elude, without appearing to
oppose.
For this purpose, the Court set about making a sort of constitution
itself. It was principally the work of M. Lamoignon, the Keeper of the
Seals, who afterwards shot himself. This new arrangement consisted in
establishing a body under the name of a Cour Pleniere, or Full Court,
in which were invested all the powers that the Government might have
occasion to make use of. The persons composing this Court were to be
nominated by the King; the contended right of taxation was given up
on the part of the King, and a new criminal code of laws and law
proceedings was substituted in the room of the former. The thing, in
many points, contained better principles than those upon which the
Government had hitherto been administered; but with respect to the Cour
Pleniere, it was no other than a medium through which despotism was to
pass, without appearing to act directly from itself.
The Cabinet had high expectations from their new contrivance. The people
who were to compose the Cour Pleniere were already nominated; and as it
was necessary to carry a fair appearance, many of the best characters in
the nation were appointed among the number. It was to commence on May
8, 1788; but an opposition arose to it on two grounds the one as to
principle, the other as to form.
The attempt to establish the Cour Pleniere had an effect upon the nation
which itself did not perceive. It was a sort of new form of government
that insensibly served to put the old one out of sight and to unhinge
it from the superstitious authority of antiquity. It was Government
dethroning Government; and the old one, by attempting to make a new one,
made a chasm.
It could not well escape the sagacity of M. Neckar, that the mode of
1614 would answer neither the purpose of the then government nor of the
nation. As matters were at that time circumstanced it would have been
too contentious to agree upon anything. The debates would have been
endless upon privileges and exemptions, in which neither the wants of
the Government nor the wishes of the nation for a Constitution would
have been attended to. But as he did not choose to take the decision
upon himself, he summoned again the Assembly of the Notables and
referred it to them. This body was in general interested in the
decision, being chiefly of aristocracy and high-paid clergy, and they
decided in favor of the mode of 1614. This decision was against the
sense of the Nation, and also against the wishes of the Court; for
the aristocracy opposed itself to both and contended for privileges
independent of either. The subject was then taken up by the Parliament,
who recommended that the number of the Commons should be equal to the
other two: and they should all sit in one house and vote in one body.
The number finally determined on was 1,200; 600 to be chosen by the
Commons (and this was less than their proportion ought to have been when
their worth and consequence is considered on a national scale), 300 by
the Clergy, and 300 by the Aristocracy; but with respect to the mode of
assembling themselves, whether together or apart, or the manner in which
they should vote, those matters were referred.*[9]
The election that followed was not a contested election, but an animated
one. The candidates were not men, but principles. Societies were formed
in Paris, and committees of correspondence and communication established
throughout the nation, for the purpose of enlightening the people, and
explaining to them the principles of civil government; and so orderly
was the election conducted, that it did not give rise even to the rumour
of tumult.
The States-General were to meet at Versailles in April 1789, but did not
assemble till May. They situated themselves in three separate chambers,
or rather the Clergy and Aristocracy withdrew each into a separate
chamber. The majority of the Aristocracy claimed what they called the
privilege of voting as a separate body, and of giving their consent
or their negative in that manner; and many of the bishops and the
high-beneficed clergy claimed the same privilege on the part of their
Order.
The Tiers Etat (as they were then called) disowned any knowledge of
artificial orders and artificial privileges; and they were not only
resolute on this point, but somewhat disdainful. They began to consider
the Aristocracy as a kind of fungus growing out of the corruption of
society, that could not be admitted even as a branch of it; and from the
disposition the Aristocracy had shown by upholding Lettres de Cachet,
and in sundry other instances, it was manifest that no constitution
could be formed by admitting men in any other character than as National
Men.
After various altercations on this head, the Tiers Etat or Commons (as
they were then called) declared themselves (on a motion made for that
purpose by the Abbe Sieyes) "The Representative Of The Nation; and that
the two Orders could be considered but as deputies of corporations, and
could only have a deliberate voice when they assembled in a national
character with the national representatives." This proceeding
extinguished the style of Etats Generaux, or States-General, and erected
it into the style it now bears, that of L'Assemblee Nationale, or
National Assembly.
This motion was not made in a precipitate manner. It was the result of
cool deliberation, and concerned between the national representatives
and the patriotic members of the two chambers, who saw into the folly,
mischief, and injustice of artificial privileged distinctions. It was
become evident, that no constitution, worthy of being called by that
name, could be established on anything less than a national ground.
The Aristocracy had hitherto opposed the despotism of the Court, and
affected the language of patriotism; but it opposed it as its rival (as
the English Barons opposed King John) and it now opposed the nation from
the same motives.
The King, who, very different from the general class called by that
name, is a man of a good heart, showed himself disposed to recommend
a union of the three chambers, on the ground the National Assembly had
taken; but the malcontents exerted themselves to prevent it, and began
now to have another project in view. Their numbers consisted of a
majority of the aristocratical chamber, and the minority of the clerical
chamber, chiefly of bishops and high-beneficed clergy; and these men
were determined to put everything to issue, as well by strength as by
stratagem. They had no objection to a constitution; but it must be such
a one as themselves should dictate, and suited to their own views and
particular situations. On the other hand, the Nation disowned knowing
anything of them but as citizens, and was determined to shut out all
such up-start pretensions. The more aristocracy appeared, the more it
was despised; there was a visible imbecility and want of intellects in
the majority, a sort of je ne sais quoi, that while it affected to be
more than citizen, was less than man. It lost ground from contempt more
than from hatred; and was rather jeered at as an ass, than dreaded as a
lion. This is the general character of aristocracy, or what are called
Nobles or Nobility, or rather No-ability, in all countries.
As the form of sitting in separate chambers was yet apparently kept up,
though essentially destroyed, the national representatives immediately
after this declaration of the King resorted to their own chambers
to consult on a protest against it; and the minority of the chamber
(calling itself the Nobles), who had joined the national cause, retired
to a private house to consult in like manner. The malcontents had by
this time concerted their measures with the court, which the Count
D'Artois undertook to conduct; and as they saw from the discontent which
the declaration excited, and the opposition making against it, that they
could not obtain a control over the intended constitution by a
separate vote, they prepared themselves for their final object--that of
conspiring against the National Assembly, and overthrowing it.
The next morning the door of the chamber of the National Assembly was
shut against them, and guarded by troops; and the members were
refused admittance. On this they withdrew to a tennis-ground in the
neighbourhood of Versailles, as the most convenient place they could
find, and, after renewing their session, took an oath never to separate
from each other, under any circumstance whatever, death excepted, until
they had established a constitution. As the experiment of shutting up
the house had no other effect than that of producing a closer connection
in the members, it was opened again the next day, and the public
business recommenced in the usual place.
We are now to have in view the forming of the new ministry, which was to
accomplish the overthrow of the National Assembly. But as force would
be necessary, orders were issued to assemble thirty thousand troops, the
command of which was given to Broglio, one of the intended new ministry,
who was recalled from the country for this purpose. But as some
management was necessary to keep this plan concealed till the moment it
should be ready for execution, it is to this policy that a declaration
made by Count D'Artois must be attributed, and which is here proper to
be introduced.
But in a few days from this time the plot unravelled itself M. Neckar
and the ministry were displaced, and a new one formed of the enemies
of the Revolution; and Broglio, with between twenty-five and thirty
thousand foreign troops, was arrived to support them. The mask was now
thrown off, and matters were come to a crisis. The event was that in a
space of three days the new ministry and their abettors found it prudent
to fly the nation; the Bastille was taken, and Broglio and his foreign
troops dispersed, as is already related in the former part of this work.
The conspiracy being thus dispersed, one of the first works of the
National Assembly, instead of vindictive proclamations, as has been the
case with other governments, was to publish a declaration of the Rights
of Man, as the basis on which the new constitution was to be built, and
which is here subjoined:
Declaration
Of The
For these reasons the National Assembly doth recognize and declare, in
the presence of the Supreme Being, and with the hope of his blessing and
favour, the following sacred rights of men and of citizens:
One: Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of
their Rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on
Public Utility.
Three: The Nation is essentially the source of all Sovereignty; nor can
any individual, or any body of Men, be entitled to any authority which
is not expressly derived from it.
Four: Political Liberty consists in the power of doing whatever does not
Injure another. The exercise of the Natural Rights of every Man, has no
other limits than those which are necessary to secure to every other Man
the Free exercise of the same Rights; and these limits are determinable
only by the Law.
Five: The Law ought to Prohibit only actions hurtful to Society. What is
not Prohibited by the Law should not be hindered; nor should anyone be
compelled to that which the Law does not Require.
Six: the Law is an expression of the Will of the Community. All Citizens
have a right to concur, either personally or by their Representatives,
in its formation. It Should be the same to all, whether it protects or
punishes; and all being equal in its sight, are equally eligible to
all Honours, Places, and employments, according to their different
abilities, without any other distinction than that created by their
Virtues and talents.
Eight: The Law ought to impose no other penalties but such as are
absolutely and evidently necessary; and no one ought to be punished, but
in virtue of a Law promulgated before the offence, and Legally applied.
Nine: Every Man being presumed innocent till he has been convicted,
whenever his detention becomes indispensable, all rigour to him, more
than is necessary to secure his person, ought to be provided against by
the Law.
Ten: No Man ought to be molested on account of his opinions, not even on
account of his Religious opinions, provided his avowal of them does not
disturb the Public Order established by the Law.
The 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th articles are declaratory of principles
upon which laws shall be constructed, conformable to rights already
declared. But it is questioned by some very good people in France,
as well as in other countries, whether the 10th article sufficiently
guarantees the right it is intended to accord with; besides which it
takes off from the divine dignity of religion, and weakens its operative
force upon the mind, to make it a subject of human laws. It then
presents itself to man like light intercepted by a cloudy medium, in
which the source of it is obscured from his sight, and he sees nothing
to reverence in the dusky ray.*[10]
While the Declaration of Rights was before the National Assembly some of
its members remarked that if a declaration of rights were published
it should be accompanied by a Declaration of Duties. The observation
discovered a mind that reflected, and it only erred by not reflecting
far enough. A Declaration of Rights is, by reciprocity, a Declaration of
Duties also. Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another;
and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.
The three first articles are the base of Liberty, as well individual as
national; nor can any country be called free whose government does not
take its beginning from the principles they contain, and continue to
preserve them pure; and the whole of the Declaration of Rights is of
more value to the world, and will do more good, than all the laws and
statutes that have yet been promulgated.
Having now traced the progress of the French Revolution through most
of its principal stages, from its commencement to the taking of the
Bastille, and its establishment by the Declaration of Rights, I will
close the subject with the energetic apostrophe of M. de la Fayette,
"May this great monument, raised to Liberty, serve as a lesson to the
oppressor, and an example to the oppressed!"*[11]
MISCELLANEOUS CHAPTER
But Mr. Burke appears to have been aware of this retort; and he has
taken care to guard against it, by making government to be not only
a contrivance of human wisdom, but a monopoly of wisdom. He puts the
nation as fools on one side, and places his government of wisdom, all
wise men of Gotham, on the other side; and he then proclaims, and says
that "Men have a Right that their Wants should be provided for by this
wisdom." Having thus made proclamation, he next proceeds to explain to
them what their wants are, and also what their rights are. In this
he has succeeded dextrously, for he makes their wants to be a want of
wisdom; but as this is cold comfort, he then informs them, that they
have a right (not to any of the wisdom) but to be governed by it; and
in order to impress them with a solemn reverence for this
monopoly-government of wisdom, and of its vast capacity for all
purposes, possible or impossible, right or wrong, he proceeds with
astrological mysterious importance, to tell to them its powers in these
words: "The rights of men in government are their advantages; and these
are often in balance between differences of good; and in compromises
sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes between
evil and evil. Political reason is a computing principle;
adding--subtracting--multiplying--and dividing, morally and not
metaphysically or mathematically, true moral denominations."
As the wondering audience, whom Mr. Burke supposes himself talking to,
may not understand all this learned jargon, I will undertake to be
its interpreter. The meaning, then, good people, of all this, is: That
government is governed by no principle whatever; that it can make evil
good, or good evil, just as it pleases. In short, that government is
arbitrary power.
But there are some things which Mr. Burke has forgotten. First, he has
not shown where the wisdom originally came from: and secondly, he has
not shown by what authority it first began to act. In the manner he
introduces the matter, it is either government stealing wisdom, or
wisdom stealing government. It is without an origin, and its powers
without authority. In short, it is usurpation.
The opinions of men with respect to government are changing fast in all
countries. The Revolutions of America and France have thrown a beam of
light over the world, which reaches into man. The enormous expense of
governments has provoked people to think, by making them feel; and when
once the veil begins to rend, it admits not of repair. Ignorance is of a
peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it.
It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of
knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made
ignorant. The mind, in discovering truth, acts in the same manner as it
acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has
been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition
it was in before it saw it. Those who talk of a counter-revolution in
France, show how little they understand of man. There does not exist in
the compass of language an arrangement of words to express so much
as the means of effecting a counter-revolution. The means must be an
obliteration of knowledge; and it has never yet been discovered how to
make man unknow his knowledge, or unthink his thoughts.
"The King of England," says he, "holds his crown (for it does not belong
to the Nation, according to Mr. Burke) in contempt of the choice of the
Revolution Society, who have not a single vote for a king among them
either individually or collectively; and his Majesty's heirs each in
their time and order, will come to the Crown with the same contempt of
their choice, with which his Majesty has succeeded to that which he now
wears."
It is not the Revolution Society that Mr. Burke means; it is the Nation,
as well in its original as in its representative character; and he has
taken care to make himself understood, by saying that they have not
a vote either collectively or individually. The Revolution Society is
composed of citizens of all denominations, and of members of both the
Houses of Parliament; and consequently, if there is not a right to a
vote in any of the characters, there can be no right to any either in
the nation or in its Parliament. This ought to be a caution to every
country how to import foreign families to be kings. It is somewhat
curious to observe, that although the people of England had been in the
habit of talking about kings, it is always a Foreign House of Kings;
hating Foreigners yet governed by them.--It is now the House of
Brunswick, one of the petty tribes of Germany.
When Mr. Burke says that "His Majesty's heirs and successors, each in
their time and order, will come to the crown with the same content of
their choice with which His Majesty had succeeded to that he wears," it
is saying too much even to the humblest individual in the country;
part of whose daily labour goes towards making up the million sterling
a-year, which the country gives the person it styles a king. Government
with insolence is despotism; but when contempt is added it becomes
worse; and to pay for contempt is the excess of slavery. This species
of government comes from Germany; and reminds me of what one of the
Brunswick soldiers told me, who was taken prisoner by, the Americans
in the late war: "Ah!" said he, "America is a fine free country, it is
worth the people's fighting for; I know the difference by knowing my
own: in my country, if the prince says eat straw, we eat straw."
God help that country, thought I, be it England or elsewhere, whose
liberties are to be protected by German principles of government, and
Princes of Brunswick!
The generation which first selects a person, and puts him at the head of
its Government, either with the title of King, or any other distinction,
acts on its own choice, be it wise or foolish, as a free agent for
itself The person so set up is not hereditary, but selected and
appointed; and the generation who sets him up, does not live under a
hereditary government, but under a government of its own choice and
establishment. Were the generation who sets him up, and the person so
set up, to live for ever, it never could become hereditary succession;
and of consequence hereditary succession can only follow on the death of
the first parties.
But, exclusive of the right which any generation has to act collectively
as a testator, the objects to which it applies itself in this case, are
not within the compass of any law, or of any will or testament.
But, after all, what is this metaphor called a crown, or rather what
is monarchy? Is it a thing, or is it a name, or is it a fraud? Is it a
"contrivance of human wisdom," or of human craft to obtain money from a
nation under specious pretences? Is it a thing necessary to a nation?
If it is, in what does that necessity consist, what service does it
perform, what is its business, and what are its merits? Does the virtue
consist in the metaphor, or in the man? Doth the goldsmith that makes
the crown, make the virtue also? Doth it operate like Fortunatus's
wishing-cap, or Harlequin's wooden sword? Doth it make a man a conjurer?
In fine, what is it? It appears to be something going much out of
fashion, falling into ridicule, and rejected in some countries, both as
unnecessary and expensive. In America it is considered as an absurdity;
and in France it has so far declined, that the goodness of the man,
and the respect for his personal character, are the only things that
preserve the appearance of its existence.
When the people of England sent for George the First (and it would
puzzle a wiser man than Mr. Burke to discover for what he could be
wanted, or what service he could render), they ought at least to have
conditioned for the abandonment of Hanover. Besides the endless German
intrigues that must follow from a German Elector being King of England,
there is a natural impossibility of uniting in the same person the
principles of Freedom and the principles of Despotism, or as it is
usually called in England Arbitrary Power. A German Elector is in his
electorate a despot; how then could it be expected that he should be
attached to principles of liberty in one country, while his interest in
another was to be supported by despotism? The union cannot exist; and it
might easily have been foreseen that German Electors would make German
Kings, or in Mr. Burke's words, would assume government with "contempt."
The English have been in the habit of considering a King of England only
in the character in which he appears to them; whereas the same person,
while the connection lasts, has a home-seat in another country, the
interest of which is different to their own, and the principles of the
governments in opposition to each other. To such a person England
will appear as a town-residence, and the Electorate as the estate. The
English may wish, as I believe they do, success to the principles of
liberty in France, or in Germany; but a German Elector trembles for
the fate of despotism in his electorate; and the Duchy of Mecklenburgh,
where the present Queen's family governs, is under the same wretched
state of arbitrary power, and the people in slavish vassalage.
There never was a time when it became the English to watch continental
intrigues more circumspectly than at the present moment, and to
distinguish the politics of the Electorate from the politics of the
Nation. The Revolution of France has entirely changed the ground with
respect to England and France, as nations; but the German despots, with
Prussia at their head, are combining against liberty; and the
fondness of Mr. Pitt for office, and the interest which all his family
connections have obtained, do not give sufficient security against this
intrigue.
Whether the present reign commenced with contempt, I leave to Mr. Burke:
certain, however, it is, that it had strongly that appearance. The
animosity of the English nation, it is very well remembered, ran high;
and, had the true principles of Liberty been as well understood then
as they now promise to be, it is probable the Nation would not have
patiently submitted to so much. George the First and Second were
sensible of a rival in the remains of the Stuarts; and as they could not
but consider themselves as standing on their good behaviour, they had
prudence to keep their German principles of government to themselves;
but as the Stuart family wore away, the prudence became less necessary.
The contest between rights, and what were called prerogatives, continued
to heat the nation till some time after the conclusion of the American
War, when all at once it fell a calm--Execration exchanged itself for
applause, and Court popularity sprung up like a mushroom in a night.
On the return of a new Parliament, the new Minister, Mr. Pitt, found
himself in a secure majority; and the Nation gave him credit, not out
of regard to himself, but because it had resolved to do it out of
resentment to another. He introduced himself to public notice by
a proposed Reform of Parliament, which in its operation would have
amounted to a public justification of corruption. The Nation was to be
at the expense of buying up the rotten boroughs, whereas it ought to
punish the persons who deal in the traffic.
Passing over the two bubbles of the Dutch business and the million
a-year to sink the national debt, the matter which most presents itself,
is the affair of the Regency. Never, in the course of my observation,
was delusion more successfully acted, nor a nation more completely
deceived. But, to make this appear, it will be necessary to go over the
circumstances.
Mr. Fox had stated in the House of Commons, that the Prince of Wales,
as heir in succession, had a right in himself to assume the Government.
This was opposed by Mr. Pitt; and, so far as the opposition was
confined to the doctrine, it was just. But the principles which Mr. Pitt
maintained on the contrary side were as bad, or worse in their extent,
than those of Mr. Fox; because they went to establish an aristocracy
over the nation, and over the small representation it has in the House
of Commons.
By the appearance which the contest made, Mr. Fox took the hereditary
ground, and Mr. Pitt the Parliamentary ground; but the fact is, they
both took hereditary ground, and Mr. Pitt took the worst of the two.
The general impulse of the Nation was right; but it acted without
reflection. It approved the opposition made to the right set up by
Mr. Fox, without perceiving that Mr. Pitt was supporting another
indefeasible right more remote from the Nation, in opposition to it.
As the present generation of the people in England did not make the
Government, they are not accountable for any of its defects; but,
that sooner or later, it must come into their hands to undergo a
constitutional reformation, is as certain as that the same thing has
happened in France. If France, with a revenue of nearly twenty-four
millions sterling, with an extent of rich and fertile country above four
times larger than England, with a population of twenty-four millions
of inhabitants to support taxation, with upwards of ninety millions
sterling of gold and silver circulating in the nation, and with a debt
less than the present debt of England--still found it necessary, from
whatever cause, to come to a settlement of its affairs, it solves the
problem of funding for both countries.
It is out of the question to say how long what is called the English
constitution has lasted, and to argue from thence how long it is to
last; the question is, how long can the funding system last? It is a
thing but of modern invention, and has not yet continued beyond the
life of a man; yet in that short space it has so far accumulated, that,
together with the current expenses, it requires an amount of taxes at
least equal to the whole landed rental of the nation in acres to defray
the annual expenditure. That a government could not have always gone on
by the same system which has been followed for the last seventy years,
must be evident to every man; and for the same reason it cannot always
go on.
Mr. Burke, in his review of the finances of France, states the quantity
of gold and silver in France, at about eighty-eight millions sterling.
In doing this, he has, I presume, divided by the difference of exchange,
instead of the standard of twenty-four livres to a pound sterling; for
M. Neckar's statement, from which Mr. Burke's is taken, is two thousand
two hundred millions of livres, which is upwards of ninety-one millions
and a half sterling.
M. Neckar in France, and Mr. George Chalmers at the Office of Trade and
Plantation in England, of which Lord Hawkesbury is president, published
nearly about the same time (1786) an account of the quantity of money in
each nation, from the returns of the Mint of each nation. Mr. Chalmers,
from the returns of the English Mint at the Tower of London, states
the quantity of money in England, including Scotland and Ireland, to be
twenty millions sterling.*[12]
That the quantity of money in France cannot be under this sum, may at
once be seen from the state of the French Revenue, without referring to
the records of the French Mint for proofs. The revenue of France, prior
to the Revolution, was nearly twenty-four millions sterling; and as
paper had then no existence in France the whole revenue was collected
upon gold and silver; and it would have been impossible to have
collected such a quantity of revenue upon a less national quantity than
M. Neckar has stated. Before the establishment of paper in England,
the revenue was about a fourth part of the national amount of gold
and silver, as may be known by referring to the revenue prior to King
William, and the quantity of money stated to be in the nation at that
time, which was nearly as much as it is now.
Lisbon and Cadiz are the two ports into which (money) gold and silver
from South America are imported, and which afterwards divide and spread
themselves over Europe by means of commerce, and increase the quantity
of money in all parts of Europe. If, therefore, the amount of the annual
importation into Europe can be known, and the relative proportion of the
foreign commerce of the several nations by which it can be distributed
can be ascertained, they give a rule sufficiently true, to ascertain the
quantity of money which ought to be found in any nation, at any given
time.
M. Neckar shows from the registers of Lisbon and Cadiz, that the
importation of gold and silver into Europe, is five millions sterling
annually. He has not taken it on a single year, but on an average of
fifteen succeeding years, from 1763 to 1777, both inclusive; in which
time, the amount was one thousand eight hundred million livres, which is
seventy-five millions sterling.*[14]
From the commencement of the Hanover succession in 1714 to the time Mr.
Chalmers published, is seventy-two years; and the quantity imported
into Europe, in that time, would be three hundred and sixty millions
sterling.
As the quantity of gold and silver imported into Lisbon and Cadiz
is more exactly ascertained than that of any commodity imported into
England, and as the quantity of money coined at the Tower of London
is still more positively known, the leading facts do not admit of
controversy. Either, therefore, the commerce of England is unproductive
of profit, or the gold and silver which it brings in leak continually
away by unseen means at the average rate of about three-quarters of a
million a year, which, in the course of seventy-two years, accounts for
the deficiency; and its absence is supplied by paper.*[15]
It was the error of Mr. Pitt, Mr. Burke, and all those who were
unacquainted with the affairs of France to confound the French nation
with the French Government. The French nation, in effect, endeavoured
to render the late Government insolvent for the purpose of taking
government into its own hands: and it reserved its means for the support
of the new Government. In a country of such vast extent and population
as France the natural means cannot be wanting, and the political means
appear the instant the nation is disposed to permit them. When Mr.
Burke, in a speech last winter in the British Parliament, "cast his eyes
over the map of Europe, and saw a chasm that once was France," he talked
like a dreamer of dreams. The same natural France existed as before,
and all the natural means existed with it. The only chasm was that the
extinction of despotism had left, and which was to be filled up with
the Constitution more formidable in resources than the power which had
expired.
Upon a whole review of the subject, how vast is the contrast! While Mr.
Burke has been talking of a general bankruptcy in France, the National
Assembly has been paying off the capital of its debt; and while taxes
have increased near a million a year in England, they have lowered
several millions a year in France. Not a word has either Mr. Burke
or Mr. Pitt said about the French affairs, or the state of the French
finances, in the present Session of Parliament. The subject begins to be
too well understood, and imposition serves no longer.
CONCLUSION
The two modes of the Government which prevail in the world, are:
First, Government by election and representation.
Those two distinct and opposite forms erect themselves on the two
distinct and opposite bases of Reason and Ignorance.--As the exercise of
Government requires talents and abilities, and as talents and abilities
cannot have hereditary descent, it is evident that hereditary succession
requires a belief from man to which his reason cannot subscribe, and
which can only be established upon his ignorance; and the more ignorant
any country is, the better it is fitted for this species of Government.
As, therefore, each of those forms acts on a different base, the one
moving freely by the aid of reason, the other by ignorance; we have next
to consider, what it is that gives motion to that species of Government
which is called mixed Government, or, as it is sometimes ludicrously
styled, a Government of this, that and t' other.
From the Revolutions of America and France, and the symptoms that have
appeared in other countries, it is evident that the opinion of the world
is changing with respect to systems of Government, and that revolutions
are not within the compass of political calculations. The progress of
time and circumstances, which men assign to the accomplishment of great
changes, is too mechanical to measure the force of the mind, and the
rapidity of reflection, by which revolutions are generated: All the old
governments have received a shock from those that already appear, and
which were once more improbable, and are a greater subject of wonder,
than a general revolution in Europe would be now.
When we survey the wretched condition of man, under the monarchical and
hereditary systems of Government, dragged from his home by one power,
or driven by another, and impoverished by taxes more than by enemies,
it becomes evident that those systems are bad, and that a general
revolution in the principle and construction of Governments is
necessary.
What is government more than the management of the affairs of a Nation?
It is not, and from its nature cannot be, the property of any particular
man or family, but of the whole community, at whose expense it is
supported; and though by force and contrivance it has been usurped
into an inheritance, the usurpation cannot alter the right of things.
Sovereignty, as a matter of right, appertains to the Nation only,
and not to any individual; and a Nation has at all times an inherent
indefeasible right to abolish any form of Government it finds
inconvenient, and to establish such as accords with its interest,
disposition and happiness. The romantic and barbarous distinction of men
into Kings and subjects, though it may suit the condition of courtiers,
cannot that of citizens; and is exploded by the principle upon
which Governments are now founded. Every citizen is a member of the
Sovereignty, and, as such, can acknowledge no personal subjection; and
his obedience can be only to the laws.
When men think of what Government is, they must necessarily suppose it
to possess a knowledge of all the objects and matters upon which its
authority is to be exercised. In this view of Government, the republican
system, as established by America and France, operates to embrace the
whole of a Nation; and the knowledge necessary to the interest of
all the parts, is to be found in the center, which the parts by
representation form: But the old Governments are on a construction that
excludes knowledge as well as happiness; government by Monks, who knew
nothing of the world beyond the walls of a Convent, is as consistent as
government by Kings.
What were formerly called Revolutions, were little more than a change
of persons, or an alteration of local circumstances. They rose and fell
like things of course, and had nothing in their existence or their fate
that could influence beyond the spot that produced them. But what we
now see in the world, from the Revolutions of America and France, are
a renovation of the natural order of things, a system of principles as
universal as truth and the existence of man, and combining moral with
political happiness and national prosperity.
"I. Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of
their rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on
public utility.
"III. The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; nor can
any Individual, or Any Body Of Men, be entitled to any authority which
is not expressly derived from it."
Had such a plan been adopted at the time it was proposed, the taxes of
England and France, as two of the parties, would have been at least ten
millions sterling annually to each Nation less than they were at the
commencement of the French Revolution.
To conceive a cause why such a plan has not been adopted (and that
instead of a Congress for the purpose of preventing war, it has been
called only to terminate a war, after a fruitless expense of several
years) it will be necessary to consider the interest of Governments as a
distinct interest to that of Nations.
Why are not Republics plunged into war, but because the nature of their
Government does not admit of an interest distinct from that of the
Nation? Even Holland, though an ill-constructed Republic, and with a
commerce extending over the world, existed nearly a century without
war: and the instant the form of Government was changed in France, the
republican principles of peace and domestic prosperity and economy arose
with the new Government; and the same consequences would follow the
cause in other Nations.
Whether the forms and maxims of Governments which are still in practice,
were adapted to the condition of the world at the period they were
established, is not in this case the question. The older they are, the
less correspondence can they have with the present state of things.
Time, and change of circumstances and opinions, have the same
progressive effect in rendering modes of Government obsolete as they
have upon customs and manners.--Agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and
the tranquil arts, by which the prosperity of Nations is best promoted,
require a different system of Government, and a different species of
knowledge to direct its operations, than what might have been required
in the former condition of the world.
From what we now see, nothing of reform in the political world ought to
be held improbable. It is an age of Revolutions, in which everything
may be looked for. The intrigue of Courts, by which the system of war
is kept up, may provoke a confederation of Nations to abolish it: and
an European Congress to patronise the progress of free Government, and
promote the civilisation of Nations with each other, is an event nearer
in probability, than once were the revolutions and alliance of France
and America.
END OF PART I.
By Thomas Paine.
(1792)
THE work of which we offer a translation to the public has created the
greatest sensation in England. Paine, that man of freedom, who seems
born to preach "Common Sense" to the whole world with the same success
as in America, explains in it to the people of England the theory of the
practice of the Rights of Man.
Owing to the prejudices that still govern that nation, the author has
been obliged to condescend to answer Mr. Burke. He has done so more
especially in an extended preface which is nothing but a piece of
very tedious controversy, in which he shows himself very sensitive to
criticisms that do not really affect him. To translate it seemed an
insult to the free French people, and similar reasons have led the
editors to suppress also a dedicatory epistle addressed by Paine to
Lafayette.
The French can no longer endure dedicatory epistles. A man should write
privately to those he esteems: when he publishes a book his thoughts
should be offered to the public alone. Paine, that uncorrupted friend
of freedom, believed too in the sincerity of Lafayette. So easy is it
to deceive men of single-minded purpose! Bred at a distance from courts,
that austere American does not seem any more on his guard against the
artful ways and speech of courtiers than some Frenchmen who resemble
him.
TO
M. DE LA FAYETTE
The only point upon which I could ever discover that we differed was not
as to principles of government, but as to time. For my own part I think
it equally as injurious to good principles to permit them to linger,
as to push them on too fast. That which you suppose accomplishable in
fourteen or fifteen years, I may believe practicable in a much shorter
period. Mankind, as it appears to me, are always ripe enough to
understand their true interest, provided it be presented clearly to
their understanding, and that in a manner not to create suspicion by
anything like self-design, nor offend by assuming too much. Where we
would wish to reform we must not reproach.
I am now once more in the public world; and as I have not a right to
contemplate on so many years of remaining life as you have, I have
resolved to labour as fast as I can; and as I am anxious for your aid
and your company, I wish you to hasten your principles and overtake me.
Your sincere,
Affectionate Friend,
Thomas Paine
PREFACE
When I began the chapter entitled the "Conclusion" in the former part
of the RIGHTS OF MAN, published last year, it was my intention to have
extended it to a greater length; but in casting the whole matter in my
mind, which I wish to add, I found that it must either make the work too
bulky, or contract my plan too much. I therefore brought it to a close
as soon as the subject would admit, and reserved what I had further to
say to another opportunity.
Another reason for deferring the remainder of the work was, that Mr.
Burke promised in his first publication to renew the subject at another
opportunity, and to make a comparison of what he called the English and
French Constitutions. I therefore held myself in reserve for him. He has
published two works since, without doing this: which he certainly would
not have omitted, had the comparison been in his favour.
In his last work, his "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs," he has
quoted about ten pages from the RIGHTS OF MAN, and having given himself
the trouble of doing this, says he "shall not attempt in the smallest
degree to refute them," meaning the principles therein contained. I am
enough acquainted with Mr. Burke to know that he would if he could. But
instead of contesting them, he immediately after consoles himself with
saying that "he has done his part."--He has not done his part. He has
not performed his promise of a comparison of constitutions. He started
the controversy, he gave the challenge, and has fled from it; and he is
now a case in point with his own opinion that "the age of chivalry is
gone!"
The title, as well as the substance of his last work, his "Appeal," is
his condemnation. Principles must stand on their own merits, and if they
are good they certainly will. To put them under the shelter of other
men's authority, as Mr. Burke has done, serves to bring them into
suspicion. Mr. Burke is not very fond of dividing his honours, but in
this case he is artfully dividing the disgrace.
But who are those to whom Mr. Burke has made his appeal? A set of
childish thinkers, and half-way politicians born in the last century,
men who went no farther with any principle than as it suited their
purposes as a party; the nation was always left out of the question; and
this has been the character of every party from that day to this.
The nation sees nothing of such works, or such politics, worthy its
attention. A little matter will move a party, but it must be something
great that moves a nation.
Though I see nothing in Mr. Burke's "Appeal" worth taking much notice
of, there is, however, one expression upon which I shall offer a few
remarks. After quoting largely from the RIGHTS OF MAN, and declining to
contest the principles contained in that work, he says: "This will most
probably be done (if such writings shall be thought to deserve any other
refutation than that of criminal justice) by others, who may think with
Mr. Burke and with the same zeal."
In the first place, it has not yet been done by anybody. Not less, I
believe, than eight or ten pamphlets intended as answers to the former
part of the RIGHTS OF MAN have been published by different persons, and
not one of them to my knowledge, has extended to a second edition, nor
are even the titles of them so much as generally remembered. As I am
averse to unnecessary multiplying publications, I have answered none of
them. And as I believe that a man may write himself out of reputation
when nobody else can do it, I am careful to avoid that rock.
I now come to remark on the remaining part of the quotation I have made
from Mr. Burke.
"If," says he, "such writings shall be thought to deserve any other
refutation than that of criminal justice."
But to come at once to the point. I have differed from some professional
gentlemen on the subject of prosecutions, and I since find they are
falling into my opinion, which I will here state as fully, but as
concisely as I can.
I will first put a case with respect to any law, and then compare it
with a government, or with what in England is, or has been, called a
constitution.
I do not believe that monarchy and aristocracy will continue seven years
longer in any of the enlightened countries in Europe. If better reasons
can be shown for them than against them, they will stand; if the
contrary, they will not. Mankind are not now to be told they shall not
think, or they shall not read; and publications that go no farther than
to investigate principles of government, to invite men to reason and to
reflect, and to show the errors and excellences of different systems,
have a right to appear. If they do not excite attention, they are not
worth the trouble of a prosecution; and if they do, the prosecution will
amount to nothing, since it cannot amount to a prohibition of reading.
This would be a sentence on the public, instead of the author, and would
also be the most effectual mode of making or hastening revolution.
As to the prejudices which men have from education and habit, in favour
of any particular form or system of government, those prejudices have
yet to stand the test of reason and reflection. In fact, such prejudices
are nothing. No man is prejudiced in favour of a thing, knowing it to be
wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and
when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone. We have but a
defective idea of what prejudice is. It might be said, that until men
think for themselves the whole is prejudice, and not opinion; for that
only is opinion which is the result of reason and reflection. I offer
this remark, that Mr. Burke may not confide too much in what have been
the customary prejudices of the country.
I do not believe that the people of England have ever been fairly and
candidly dealt by. They have been imposed upon by parties, and by men
assuming the character of leaders. It is time that the nation should
rise above those trifles. It is time to dismiss that inattention which
has so long been the encouraging cause of stretching taxation to excess.
It is time to dismiss all those songs and toasts which are calculated to
enslave, and operate to suffocate reflection. On all such subjects men
have but to think, and they will neither act wrong nor be misled. To
say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their
choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not. If
such a case could be proved, it would equally prove that those who
govern are not fit to govern them, for they are a part of the same
national mass.
THOMAS PAINE
INTRODUCTION.
But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks,--and all
it wants,--is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription
to distinguish him from darkness; and no sooner did the American
governments display themselves to the world, than despotism felt a shock
and man began to contemplate redress.
As America was the only spot in the political world where the principle
of universal reformation could begin, so also was it the best in the
natural world. An assemblage of circumstances conspired, not only to
give birth, but to add gigantic maturity to its principles. The scene
which that country presents to the eye of a spectator, has something in
it which generates and encourages great ideas. Nature appears to him in
magnitude. The mighty objects he beholds, act upon his mind by enlarging
it, and he partakes of the greatness he contemplates.--Its first
settlers were emigrants from different European nations, and of
diversified professions of religion, retiring from the governmental
persecutions of the old world, and meeting in the new, not as enemies,
but as brothers. The wants which necessarily accompany the cultivation
of a wilderness produced among them a state of society, which countries
long harassed by the quarrels and intrigues of governments, had
neglected to cherish. In such a situation man becomes what he ought. He
sees his species, not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy, but as
kindred; and the example shows to the artificial world, that man must go
back to Nature for information.
If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those
which are in an advanced stage of improvement we still find the greedy
hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice
of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is
continually exercised to furnish new pretences for revenue and taxation.
It watches prosperity as its prey, and permits none to escape without a
tribute.
The revolutions which formerly took place in the world had nothing in
them that interested the bulk of mankind. They extended only to a change
of persons and measures, but not of principles, and rose or fell among
the common transactions of the moment. What we now behold may not
improperly be called a "counter-revolution." Conquest and tyranny,
at some earlier period, dispossessed man of his rights, and he is now
recovering them. And as the tide of all human affairs has its ebb
and flow in directions contrary to each other, so also is it in this.
Government founded on a moral theory, on a system of universal peace, on
the indefeasible hereditary Rights of Man, is now revolving from west
to east by a stronger impulse than the government of the sword revolved
from east to west. It interests not particular individuals, but nations
in its progress, and promises a new era to the human race.
Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect
of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the
natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and
would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual
dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all the
parts of civilised community upon each other, create that great chain
of connection which holds it together. The landholder, the farmer,
the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation,
prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the
whole. Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their law;
and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than
the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost
everything which is ascribed to government.
But she has gone further. She has not only forced man into society by
a diversity of wants which the reciprocal aid of each other can supply,
but she has implanted in him a system of social affections, which,
though not necessary to his existence, are essential to his happiness.
There is no period in life when this love for society ceases to act. It
begins and ends with our being.
For upwards of two years from the commencement of the American War,
and to a longer period in several of the American States, there were no
established forms of government. The old governments had been abolished,
and the country was too much occupied in defence to employ its attention
in establishing new governments; yet during this interval order and
harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe. There
is a natural aptness in man, and more so in society, because it embraces
a greater variety of abilities and resource, to accommodate itself to
whatever situation it is in. The instant formal government is abolished,
society begins to act: a general association takes place, and common
interest produces common security.
So far is it from being true, as has been pretended, that the abolition
of any formal government is the dissolution of society, that it acts by
a contrary impulse, and brings the latter the closer together. All
that part of its organisation which it had committed to its government,
devolves again upon itself, and acts through its medium. When men, as
well from natural instinct as from reciprocal benefits, have habituated
themselves to social and civilised life, there is always enough of its
principles in practice to carry them through any changes they may find
necessary or convenient to make in their government. In short, man is so
naturally a creature of society that it is almost impossible to put him
out of it.
Formal government makes but a small part of civilised life; and when
even the best that human wisdom can devise is established, it is a thing
more in name and idea than in fact. It is to the great and fundamental
principles of society and civilisation--to the common usage universally
consented to, and mutually and reciprocally maintained--to the unceasing
circulation of interest, which, passing through its million channels,
invigorates the whole mass of civilised man--it is to these things,
infinitely more than to anything which even the best instituted
government can perform, that the safety and prosperity of the individual
and of the whole depends.
The more perfect civilisation is, the less occasion has it for
government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs, and
govern itself; but so contrary is the practice of old governments to the
reason of the case, that the expenses of them increase in the proportion
they ought to diminish. It is but few general laws that civilised life
requires, and those of such common usefulness, that whether they are
enforced by the forms of government or not, the effect will be nearly
the same. If we consider what the principles are that first condense
men into society, and what are the motives that regulate their mutual
intercourse afterwards, we shall find, by the time we arrive at what is
called government, that nearly the whole of the business is performed by
the natural operation of the parts upon each other.
If we look back to the riots and tumults which at various times have
happened in England, we shall find that they did not proceed from the
want of a government, but that government was itself the generating
cause; instead of consolidating society it divided it; it deprived it
of its natural cohesion, and engendered discontents and disorders
which otherwise would not have existed. In those associations which men
promiscuously form for the purpose of trade, or of any concern in which
government is totally out of the question, and in which they act merely
on the principles of society, we see how naturally the various parties
unite; and this shows, by comparison, that governments, so far from
being always the cause or means of order, are often the destruction
of it. The riots of 1780 had no other source than the remains of those
prejudices which the government itself had encouraged. But with respect
to England there are also other causes.
A metaphysical man, like Mr. Burke, would have tortured his invention
to discover how such a people could be governed. He would have supposed
that some must be managed by fraud, others by force, and all by some
contrivance; that genius must be hired to impose upon ignorance, and
show and parade to fascinate the vulgar. Lost in the abundance of
his researches, he would have resolved and re-resolved, and finally
overlooked the plain and easy road that lay directly before him.
One of the great advantages of the American Revolution has been, that it
led to a discovery of the principles, and laid open the imposition, of
governments. All the revolutions till then had been worked within the
atmosphere of a court, and never on the grand floor of a nation. The
parties were always of the class of courtiers; and whatever was
their rage for reformation, they carefully preserved the fraud of the
profession.
Having thus endeavoured to show that the social and civilised state of
man is capable of performing within itself almost everything necessary
to its protection and government, it will be proper, on the other hand,
to take a review of the present old governments, and examine whether
their principles and practice are correspondent thereto.
CHAPTER II. OF THE ORIGIN OF THE PRESENT OLD GOVERNMENTS
It could have been no difficult thing in the early and solitary ages
of the world, while the chief employment of men was that of attending
flocks and herds, for a banditti of ruffians to overrun a country, and
lay it under contributions. Their power being thus established, the
chief of the band contrived to lose the name of Robber in that of
Monarch; and hence the origin of Monarchy and Kings.
Those bands of robbers having parcelled out the world, and divided it
into dominions, began, as is naturally the case, to quarrel with each
other. What at first was obtained by violence was considered by others
as lawful to be taken, and a second plunderer succeeded the first. They
alternately invaded the dominions which each had assigned to himself,
and the brutality with which they treated each other explains the
original character of monarchy. It was ruffian torturing ruffian.
The conqueror considered the conquered, not as his prisoner, but his
property. He led him in triumph rattling in chains, and doomed him, at
pleasure, to slavery or death. As time obliterated the history of their
beginning, their successors assumed new appearances, to cut off the
entail of their disgrace, but their principles and objects remained the
same. What at first was plunder, assumed the softer name of revenue; and
the power originally usurped, they affected to inherit.
Nothing can appear more contradictory than the principles on which the
old governments began, and the condition to which society, civilisation
and commerce are capable of carrying mankind. Government, on the old
system, is an assumption of power, for the aggrandisement of itself; on
the new, a delegation of power for the common benefit of society.
The former supports itself by keeping up a system of war; the latter
promotes a system of peace, as the true means of enriching a nation.
The one encourages national prejudices; the other promotes universal
society, as the means of universal commerce. The one measures its
prosperity, by the quantity of revenue it extorts; the other proves its
excellence, by the small quantity of taxes it requires.
Mr. Burke has talked of old and new whigs. If he can amuse himself with
childish names and distinctions, I shall not interrupt his pleasure. It
is not to him, but to the Abbe Sieyes, that I address this chapter. I
am already engaged to the latter gentleman to discuss the subject of
monarchical government; and as it naturally occurs in comparing the old
and new systems, I make this the opportunity of presenting to him my
observations. I shall occasionally take Mr. Burke in my way.
Though it might be proved that the system of government now called the
New, is the most ancient in principle of all that have existed, being
founded on the original, inherent Rights of Man: yet, as tyranny and
the sword have suspended the exercise of those rights for many centuries
past, it serves better the purpose of distinction to call it the new,
than to claim the right of calling it the old.
The first general distinction between those two systems, is, that the
one now called the old is hereditary, either in whole or in part;
and the new is entirely representative. It rejects all hereditary
government:
We have heard the Rights of Man called a levelling system; but the
only system to which the word levelling is truly applicable, is the
hereditary monarchical system. It is a system of mental levelling.
It indiscriminately admits every species of character to the same
authority. Vice and virtue, ignorance and wisdom, in short, every
quality good or bad, is put on the same level. Kings succeed each other,
not as rationals, but as animals. It signifies not what their mental or
moral characters are. Can we then be surprised at the abject state of
the human mind in monarchical countries, when the government itself is
formed on such an abject levelling system?--It has no fixed character.
To-day it is one thing; to-morrow it is something else. It changes with
the temper of every succeeding individual, and is subject to all the
varieties of each. It is government through the medium of passions and
accidents. It appears under all the various characters of childhood,
decrepitude, dotage, a thing at nurse, in leading-strings, or in
crutches. It reverses the wholesome order of nature. It occasionally
puts children over men, and the conceits of nonage over wisdom and
experience. In short, we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of
government, than hereditary succession, in all its cases, presents.
Passing over, for the present, all the evils and mischiefs which
monarchy has occasioned in the world, nothing can more effectually
prove its uselessness in a state of civil government, than making it
hereditary. Would we make any office hereditary that required wisdom and
abilities to fill it? And where wisdom and abilities are not necessary,
such an office, whatever it may be, is superfluous or insignificant.
But I might go further, and place also foreign wars, of whatever kind,
to the same cause. It is by adding the evil of hereditary succession
to that of monarchy, that a permanent family interest is created, whose
constant objects are dominion and revenue. Poland, though an elective
monarchy, has had fewer wars than those which are hereditary; and it is
the only government that has made a voluntary essay, though but a small
one, to reform the condition of the country.
The representative system takes society and civilisation for its basis;
nature, reason, and experience, for its guide.
Much less could it when made hereditary. This is the most effectual of
all forms to preclude knowledge. Neither could the high democratical
mind have voluntarily yielded itself to be governed by children and
idiots, and all the motley insignificance of character, which attends
such a mere animal system, the disgrace and the reproach of reason and
of man.
As to the aristocratical form, it has the same vices and defects with
the monarchical, except that the chance of abilities is better from the
proportion of numbers, but there is still no security for the right use
and application of them.*[17]
Mr. Burke has two or three times, in his parliamentary speeches, and in
his publications, made use of a jingle of words that convey no ideas.
Speaking of government, he says, "It is better to have monarchy for its
basis, and republicanism for its corrective, than republicanism for its
basis, and monarchy for its corrective."--If he means that it is
better to correct folly with wisdom, than wisdom with folly, I will no
otherwise contend with him, than that it would be much better to reject
the folly entirely.
But what is this thing which Mr. Burke calls monarchy? Will he explain
it? All men can understand what representation is; and that it must
necessarily include a variety of knowledge and talents. But what
security is there for the same qualities on the part of monarchy? or,
when the monarchy is a child, where then is the wisdom? What does
it know about government? Who then is the monarch, or where is the
monarchy? If it is to be performed by regency, it proves to be a farce.
A regency is a mock species of republic, and the whole of monarchy
deserves no better description. It is a thing as various as imagination
can paint. It has none of the stable character that government ought
to possess. Every succession is a revolution, and every regency a
counter-revolution. The whole of it is a scene of perpetual court cabal
and intrigue, of which Mr. Burke is himself an instance. To render
monarchy consistent with government, the next in succession should
not be born a child, but a man at once, and that man a Solomon. It is
ridiculous that nations are to wait and government be interrupted till
boys grow to be men.
Whether I have too little sense to see, or too much to be imposed upon;
whether I have too much or too little pride, or of anything else,
I leave out of the question; but certain it is, that what is called
monarchy, always appears to me a silly, contemptible thing. I compare it
to something kept behind a curtain, about which there is a great deal of
bustle and fuss, and a wonderful air of seeming solemnity; but when, by
any accident, the curtain happens to be open--and the company see what
it is, they burst into laughter.
We must shut our eyes against reason, we must basely degrade our
understanding, not to see the folly of what is called monarchy. Nature
is orderly in all her works; but this is a mode of government that
counteracts nature. It turns the progress of the human faculties upside
down. It subjects age to be governed by children, and wisdom by folly.
I presume that no man in his sober senses will compare the character
of any of the kings of Europe with that of General Washington. Yet, in
France, and also in England, the expense of the civil list only, for the
support of one man, is eight times greater than the whole expense of
the federal government in America. To assign a reason for this, appears
almost impossible. The generality of people in America, especially the
poor, are more able to pay taxes, than the generality of people either
in France or England.
But the case is, that the representative system diffuses such a body
of knowledge throughout a nation, on the subject of government, as to
explode ignorance and preclude imposition. The craft of courts cannot be
acted on that ground. There is no place for mystery; nowhere for it
to begin. Those who are not in the representation, know as much of
the nature of business as those who are. An affectation of mysterious
importance would there be scouted. Nations can have no secrets; and the
secrets of courts, like those of individuals, are always their defects.
In the representative system, the reason for everything must publicly
appear. Every man is a proprietor in government, and considers it a
necessary part of his business to understand. It concerns his interest,
because it affects his property. He examines the cost, and compares it
with the advantages; and above all, he does not adopt the slavish custom
of following what in other governments are called Leaders.
That men mean distinct and separate things when they speak of
constitutions and of governments, is evident; or why are those terms
distinctly and separately used? A constitution is not the act of a
government, but of a people constituting a government; and government
without a constitution, is power without a right.
It may not appear improper to remind the reader that the United
States of America consist of thirteen separate states, each of
which established a government for itself, after the declaration of
independence, done the 4th of July, 1776. Each state acted independently
of the rest, in forming its governments; but the same general principle
pervades the whole. When the several state governments were formed, they
proceeded to form the federal government, that acts over the whole in
all matters which concern the interest of the whole, or which relate to
the intercourse of the several states with each other, or with foreign
nations. I will begin with giving an instance from one of the state
governments (that of Pennsylvania) and then proceed to the federal
government.
Though these committees had been duly elected by the people, they were
not elected expressly for the purpose, nor invested with the authority
of forming a constitution; and as they could not, consistently with the
American idea of rights, assume such a power, they could only confer
upon the matter, and put it into a train of operation. The conferees,
therefore, did no more than state the case, and recommend to the several
counties to elect six representatives for each county, to meet in
convention at Philadelphia, with powers to form a constitution, and
propose it for public consideration.
Having thus given an instance from one of the states, I will show the
proceedings by which the federal constitution of the United States arose
and was formed.
Congress, at its two first meetings, in September 1774, and May 1775,
was nothing more than a deputation from the legislatures of the several
provinces, afterwards states; and had no other authority than what arose
from common consent, and the necessity of its acting as a public body.
In everything which related to the internal affairs of America, congress
went no further than to issue recommendations to the several provincial
assemblies, who at discretion adopted them or not. Nothing on the
part of congress was compulsive; yet, in this situation, it was more
faithfully and affectionately obeyed than was any government in
Europe. This instance, like that of the national assembly in France,
sufficiently shows, that the strength of government does not consist in
any thing itself, but in the attachment of a nation, and the interest
which a people feel in supporting it. When this is lost, government is
but a child in power; and though, like the old government in France, it
may harass individuals for a while, it but facilitates its own fall.
For this purpose, the act, called the act of confederation (which was a
sort of imperfect federal constitution), was proposed, and, after long
deliberation, was concluded in the year 1781. It was not the act of
congress, because it is repugnant to the principles of representative
government that a body should give power to itself. Congress first
informed the several states, of the powers which it conceived were
necessary to be invested in the union, to enable it to perform the
duties and services required from it; and the states severally agreed
with each other, and concentrated in congress those powers.
It may not be improper to observe that in both those instances (the one
of Pennsylvania, and the other of the United States), there is no such
thing as the idea of a compact between the people on one side, and the
government on the other. The compact was that of the people with each
other, to produce and constitute a government. To suppose that any
government can be a party in a compact with the whole people, is to
suppose it to have existence before it can have a right to exist. The
only instance in which a compact can take place between the people and
those who exercise the government, is, that the people shall pay them,
while they choose to employ them.
Government is not a trade which any man, or any body of men, has a right
to set up and exercise for his own emolument, but is altogether a trust,
in right of those by whom that trust is delegated, and by whom it is
always resumeable. It has of itself no rights; they are altogether
duties.
The powers vested in the governments of the several states, by the state
constitutions, were found, upon experience, to be too great; and those
vested in the federal government, by the act of confederation, too
little. The defect was not in the principle, but in the distribution of
power.
The convention went deeply into all the subjects; and having, after a
variety of debate and investigation, agreed among themselves upon the
several parts of a federal constitution, the next question was, the
manner of giving it authority and practice.
For this purpose they did not, like a cabal of courtiers, send for a
Dutch Stadtholder, or a German Elector; but they referred the whole
matter to the sense and interest of the country.
As soon as nine states had concurred (and the rest followed in the
order their conventions were elected), the old fabric of the federal
government was taken down, and the new one erected, of which General
Washington is president.--In this place I cannot help remarking, that
the character and services of this gentleman are sufficient to put all
those men called kings to shame. While they are receiving from the sweat
and labours of mankind, a prodigality of pay, to which neither their
abilities nor their services can entitle them, he is rendering every
service in his power, and refusing every pecuniary reward. He accepted
no pay as commander-in-chief; he accepts none as president of the United
States.
Dr. Johnson could not have advanced such a position in any country where
there was a constitution; and he is himself an evidence that no such
thing as a constitution exists in England. But it may be put as a
question, not improper to be investigated, that if a constitution does
not exist, how came the idea of its existence so generally established?
Magna Charta, as it was called (it is now like an almanack of the same
date), was no more than compelling the government to renounce a part of
its assumptions. It did not create and give powers to government in a
manner a constitution does; but was, as far as it went, of the nature of
a re-conquest, and not a constitution; for could the nation have totally
expelled the usurpation, as France has done its despotism, it would then
have had a constitution to form.
The history of the Edwards and the Henries, and up to the commencement
of the Stuarts, exhibits as many instances of tyranny as could be acted
within the limits to which the nation had restricted it. The Stuarts
endeavoured to pass those limits, and their fate is well known. In
all those instances we see nothing of a constitution, but only of
restrictions on assumed power.
After this, another William, descended from the same stock, and claiming
from the same origin, gained possession; and of the two evils, James
and William, the nation preferred what it thought the least; since, from
circumstances, it must take one. The act, called the Bill of Rights,
comes here into view. What is it, but a bargain, which the parts of
the government made with each other to divide powers, profits, and
privileges? You shall have so much, and I will have the rest; and with
respect to the nation, it said, for your share, You shall have the right
of petitioning. This being the case, the bill of rights is more properly
a bill of wrongs, and of insult. As to what is called the convention
parliament, it was a thing that made itself, and then made the authority
by which it acted. A few persons got together, and called themselves by
that name. Several of them had never been elected, and none of them for
the purpose.
I cannot believe that any nation, reasoning on its own rights, would
have thought of calling these things a constitution, if the cry of
constitution had not been set up by the government. It has got into
circulation like the words bore and quoz [quiz], by being chalked up in
the speeches of parliament, as those words were on window shutters and
doorposts; but whatever the constitution may be in other respects, it
has undoubtedly been the most productive machine of taxation that was
ever invented. The taxes in France, under the new constitution, are not
quite thirteen shillings per head,*[18] and the taxes in England, under
what is called its present constitution, are forty-eight shillings
and sixpence per head--men, women, and children--amounting to nearly
seventeen millions sterling, besides the expense of collecting, which is
upwards of a million more.
Mr. Burke is such a bold presumer, and advances his assertions and his
premises with such a deficiency of judgment, that, without troubling
ourselves about principles of philosophy or politics, the mere logical
conclusions they produce, are ridiculous. For instance,
If Mr. Burke's arguments have not weight enough to keep one serious, the
fault is less mine than his; and as I am willing to make an apology to
the reader for the liberty I have taken, I hope Mr. Burke will also make
his for giving the cause.
Having thus paid Mr. Burke the compliment of remembering him, I return
to the subject.
We now see all over Europe, and particularly in England, the curious
phenomenon of a nation looking one way, and the government the
other--the one forward and the other backward. If governments are to go
on by precedent, while nations go on by improvement, they must at last
come to a final separation; and the sooner, and the more civilly they
determine this point, the better.*[20]
Opinions differ more on this subject than with respect to the whole.
That a nation ought to have a constitution, as a rule for the conduct
of its government, is a simple question in which all men, not directly
courtiers, will agree. It is only on the component parts that questions
and opinions multiply.
But this difficulty, like every other, will diminish when put into a
train of being rightly understood.
So far as regards the execution of the laws, that which is called the
judicial power, is strictly and properly the executive power of every
country. It is that power to which every individual has appeal, and
which causes the laws to be executed; neither have we any other clear
idea with respect to the official execution of the laws. In England, and
also in America and France, this power begins with the magistrate, and
proceeds up through all the courts of judicature.
The case is, that mankind (from the long tyranny of assumed power) have
had so few opportunities of making the necessary trials on modes and
principles of government, in order to discover the best, that government
is but now beginning to be known, and experience is yet wanting to
determine many particulars.
Thirdly, That every proposed bill shall be first debated in those parts
by succession, that they may become the hearers of each other, but
without taking any vote. After which the whole representation to
assemble for a general debate and determination by vote.
To this proposed improvement has been added another, for the purpose of
keeping the representation in the state of constant renovation; which
is, that one-third of the representation of each county, shall go out at
the expiration of one year, and the number be replaced by new elections.
Another third at the expiration of the second year replaced in like
manner, and every third year to be a general election.*[22]
When once such a vicious system is established it becomes the guard and
protection of all inferior abuses. The man who is in the receipt of a
million a year is the last person to promote a spirit of reform, lest,
in the event, it should reach to himself. It is always his interest to
defend inferior abuses, as so many outworks to protect the citadel; and
on this species of political fortification, all the parts have such a
common dependence that it is never to be expected they will attack each
other.*[24]
Monarchy would not have continued so many ages in the world, had it not
been for the abuses it protects. It is the master-fraud, which shelters
all others. By admitting a participation of the spoil, it makes itself
friends; and when it ceases to do this it will cease to be the idol of
courtiers.
But this is not all. Though such a person cannot dispose of the
government in the manner of a testator, he dictates the marriage
connections, which, in effect, accomplish a great part of the same end.
He cannot directly bequeath half the government to Prussia, but he can
form a marriage partnership that will produce almost the same thing.
Under such circumstances, it is happy for England that she is not
situated on the Continent, or she might, like Holland, fall under
the dictatorship of Prussia. Holland, by marriage, is as effectually
governed by Prussia, as if the old tyranny of bequeathing the government
had been the means.
A nation can have no right to the time and services of any person at his
own expense, whom it may choose to employ or entrust in any department
whatever; neither can any reason be given for making provision for the
support of any one part of a government and not for the other.
But admitting that the honour of being entrusted with any part of a
government is to be considered a sufficient reward, it ought to be so to
every person alike. If the members of the legislature of any country
are to serve at their own expense that which is called the executive,
whether monarchical or by any other name, ought to serve in like manner.
It is inconsistent to pay the one, and accept the service of the other
gratis.
The principle upon which Mr. Burke formed his political creed, that of
"binding and controlling posterity to the end of time, and of renouncing
and abdicating the rights of all posterity, for ever," is now become too
detestable to be made a subject of debate; and therefore, I pass it over
with no other notice than exposing it.
Secondly, Because the importation by the smuggling trade does not appear
on the custom-house books, to arrange against the exports.
France and England are the only two countries in Europe where a
reformation in government could have successfully begun. The one secure
by the ocean, and the other by the immensity of its internal strength,
could defy the malignancy of foreign despotism. But it is with
revolutions as with commerce, the advantages increase by their becoming
general, and double to either what each would receive alone.
As a new system is now opening to the view of the world, the European
courts are plotting to counteract it. Alliances, contrary to all former
systems, are agitating, and a common interest of courts is forming
against the common interest of man. This combination draws a line that
runs throughout Europe, and presents a cause so entirely new as to
exclude all calculations from former circumstances. While despotism
warred with despotism, man had no interest in the contest; but in a
cause that unites the soldier with the citizen, and nation with nation,
the despotism of courts, though it feels the danger and meditates
revenge, is afraid to strike.
No question has arisen within the records of history that pressed with
the importance of the present. It is not whether this or that party
shall be in or not, or Whig or Tory, high or low shall prevail; but
whether man shall inherit his rights, and universal civilisation take
place? Whether the fruits of his labours shall be enjoyed by himself
or consumed by the profligacy of governments? Whether robbery shall be
banished from courts, and wretchedness from countries?
When, in countries that are called civilised, we see age going to the
workhouse and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong in the
system of government. It would seem, by the exterior appearance of such
countries, that all was happiness; but there lies hidden from the eye of
common observation, a mass of wretchedness, that has scarcely any other
chance, than to expire in poverty or infamy. Its entrance into life is
marked with the presage of its fate; and until this is remedied, it is
in vain to punish.
Why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor? The fact is a
proof, among other things, of a wretchedness in their condition. Bred up
without morals, and cast upon the world without a prospect, they are
the exposed sacrifice of vice and legal barbarity. The millions that are
superfluously wasted upon governments are more than sufficient to reform
those evils, and to benefit the condition of every man in a nation, not
included within the purlieus of a court. This I hope to make appear in
the progress of this work.
Knowing my own heart and feeling myself as I now do, superior to all the
skirmish of party, the inveteracy of interested or mistaken opponents,
I answer not to falsehood or abuse, but proceed to the defects of the
English Government.
But it is not in the representation only that the defects lie, and
therefore I proceed in the next place to the aristocracy.
What pillar of security does the landed interest require more than any
other interest in the state, or what right has it to a distinct and
separate representation from the general interest of a nation? The only
use to be made of this power (and which it always has made), is to ward
off taxes from itself, and throw the burthen upon those articles of
consumption by which itself would be least affected.
That this has been the consequence (and will always be the consequence)
of constructing governments on combinations, is evident with respect to
England, from the history of its taxes.
Before the coming of the Hanoverians, the taxes were divided in nearly
equal proportions between the land and articles of consumption, the land
bearing rather the largest share: but since that era nearly thirteen
millions annually of new taxes have been thrown upon consumption. The
consequence of which has been a constant increase in the number and
wretchedness of the poor, and in the amount of the poor-rates. Yet here
again the burthen does not fall in equal proportions on the aristocracy
with the rest of the community. Their residences, whether in town or
country, are not mixed with the habitations of the poor. They live apart
from distress, and the expense of relieving it. It is in manufacturing
towns and labouring villages that those burthens press the heaviest; in
many of which it is one class of poor supporting another.
Why then, does Mr. Burke talk of his house of peers as the pillar of
the landed interest? Were that pillar to sink into the earth, the same
landed property would continue, and the same ploughing, sowing, and
reaping would go on. The aristocracy are not the farmers who work the
land, and raise the produce, but are the mere consumers of the rent; and
when compared with the active world are the drones, a seraglio of males,
who neither collect the honey nor form the hive, but exist only for lazy
enjoyment.
Men of small or moderate estates are more injured by the taxes being
thrown on articles of consumption, than they are eased by warding it
from landed property, for the following reasons:
These are but a part of the mischiefs flowing from the wretched scheme
of an house of peers.
To all these are to be added the numerous dependants, the long list of
younger branches and distant relations, who are to be provided for
at the public expense: in short, were an estimation to be made of the
charge of aristocracy to a nation, it will be found nearly equal to that
of supporting the poor. The Duke of Richmond alone (and there are cases
similar to his) takes away as much for himself as would maintain two
thousand poor and aged persons. Is it, then, any wonder, that under such
a system of government, taxes and rates have multiplied to their present
extent?
Mr. Burke may call this law what he pleases, but humanity and impartial
reflection will denounce it as a law of brutal injustice. Were we not
accustomed to the daily practice, and did we only hear of it as the
law of some distant part of the world, we should conclude that
the legislators of such countries had not arrived at a state of
civilisation.
The hazard to which this office is exposed in all countries, is not from
anything that can happen to the man, but from what may happen to the
nation--the danger of its coming to its senses.
It has been customary to call the crown the executive power, and the
custom is continued, though the reason has ceased.
It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never
taken off. However true this may have been of late, it was not always
so. Either, therefore, the people of former times were more watchful
over government than those of the present, or government was
administered with less extravagance.
It is now seven hundred years since the Norman conquest, and the
establishment of what is called the crown. Taking this portion of time
in seven separate periods of one hundred years each, the amount of the
annual taxes, at each period, will be as follows:
These statements and those which follow, are taken from Sir John
Sinclair's History of the Revenue; by which it appears, that taxes
continued decreasing for four hundred years, at the expiration of which
time they were reduced three-fourths, viz., from four hundred thousand
pounds to one hundred thousand. The people of England of the present
day, have a traditionary and historical idea of the bravery of their
ancestors; but whatever their virtues or their vices might have been,
they certainly were a people who would not be imposed upon, and who kept
governments in awe as to taxation, if not as to principle. Though they
were not able to expel the monarchical usurpation, they restricted it to
a republican economy of taxes.
The difference between the first four hundred years and the last three,
is so astonishing, as to warrant an opinion, that the national character
of the English has changed. It would have been impossible to have
dragooned the former English, into the excess of taxation that now
exists; and when it is considered that the pay of the army, the navy,
and of all the revenue officers, is the same now as it was about a
hundred years ago, when the taxes were not above a tenth part of what
they are at present, it appears impossible to account for the enormous
increase and expenditure on any other ground, than extravagance,
corruption, and intrigue.*[31]
With the Revolution of 1688, and more so since the Hanover succession,
came the destructive system of continental intrigues, and the rage for
foreign wars and foreign dominion; systems of such secure mystery that
the expenses admit of no accounts; a single line stands for millions. To
what excess taxation might have extended had not the French revolution
contributed to break up the system, and put an end to pretences, is
impossible to say. Viewed, as that revolution ought to be, as the
fortunate means of lessening the load of taxes of both countries, it is
of as much importance to England as to France; and, if properly improved
to all the advantages of which it is capable, and to which it leads,
deserves as much celebration in one country as the other.
In pursuing this subject, I shall begin with the matter that first
presents itself, that of lessening the burthen of taxes; and shall then
add such matter and propositions, respecting the three countries of
England, France, and America, as the present prospect of things appears
to justify: I mean, an alliance of the three, for the purposes that will
be mentioned in their proper place.
What has happened may happen again. By the statement before shown of
the progress of taxation, it is seen that taxes have been lessened to
a fourth part of what they had formerly been. Though the present
circumstances do not admit of the same reduction, yet they admit of such
a beginning, as may accomplish that end in less time than in the former
case.
The amount of taxes for the year ending at Michaelmas 1788, was as
follows:
Land-tax L 1,950,000
Customs 3,789,274
Excise (including old and new malt) 6,751,727
Stamps 1,278,214
Miscellaneous taxes and incidents 1,803,755
-----------
L15,572,755
Since the year 1788, upwards of one million new taxes have been laid on,
besides the produce of the lotteries; and as the taxes have in general
been more productive since than before, the amount may be taken, in
round numbers, at L17,000,000. (The expense of collection and the
drawbacks, which together amount to nearly two millions, are paid out of
the gross amount; and the above is the net sum paid into the exchequer).
This sum of seventeen millions is applied to two different purposes; the
one to pay the interest of the National Debt, the other to the current
expenses of each year. About nine millions are appropriated to the
former; and the remainder, being nearly eight millions, to the latter.
As to the million, said to be applied to the reduction of the debt, it
is so much like paying with one hand and taking out with the other, as
not to merit much notice. It happened, fortunately for France, that
she possessed national domains for paying off her debt, and thereby
lessening her taxes; but as this is not the case with England, her
reduction of taxes can only take place by reducing the current expenses,
which may now be done to the amount of four or five millions annually,
as will hereafter appear. When this is accomplished it will more than
counter-balance the enormous charge of the American war; and the saving
will be from the same source from whence the evil arose. As to the
national debt, however heavy the interest may be in taxes, yet, as it
serves to keep alive a capital useful to commerce, it balances by its
effects a considerable part of its own weight; and as the quantity
of gold and silver is, by some means or other, short of its proper
proportion, being not more than twenty millions, whereas it should be
sixty (foreign intrigue, foreign wars, foreign dominions, will in
a great measure account for the deficiency), it would, besides the
injustice, be bad policy to extinguish a capital that serves to supply
that defect. But with respect to the current expense, whatever is saved
therefrom is gain. The excess may serve to keep corruption alive, but it
has no re-action on credit and commerce, like the interest of the debt.
These matters admitted, the national expenses might be put back, for the
sake of a precedent, to what they were at some period when France and
England were not enemies. This, consequently, must be prior to the
Hanover succession, and also to the Revolution of 1688.*[32] The first
instance that presents itself, antecedent to those dates, is in the
very wasteful and profligate times of Charles the Second; at which time
England and France acted as allies. If I have chosen a period of great
extravagance, it will serve to show modern extravagance in a still worse
light; especially as the pay of the navy, the army, and the revenue
officers has not increased since that time.
The peace establishment was then as follows (see Sir John Sinclair's
History of the Revenue):
Navy L 300,000
Army 212,000
Ordnance 40,000
Civil List 462,115
-------
L1,014,115
Navy L 500,000
Army 500,000
Expenses of Government 500,000
----------
L1,500,000
Even this sum is six times greater than the expenses of government are
in America, yet the civil internal government in England (I mean that
administered by means of quarter sessions, juries and assize, and which,
in fact, is nearly the whole, and performed by the nation), is
less expense upon the revenue, than the same species and portion of
government is in America.
It is time that nations should be rational, and not be governed like
animals, for the pleasure of their riders. To read the history of kings,
a man would be almost inclined to suppose that government consisted in
stag-hunting, and that every nation paid a million a-year to a huntsman.
Man ought to have pride, or shame enough to blush at being thus imposed
upon, and when he feels his proper character he will. Upon all subjects
of this nature, there is often passing in the mind, a train of ideas he
has not yet accustomed himself to encourage and communicate. Restrained
by something that puts on the character of prudence, he acts the
hypocrite upon himself as well as to others. It is, however, curious
to observe how soon this spell can be dissolved. A single expression,
boldly conceived and uttered, will sometimes put a whole company into
their proper feelings: and whole nations are acted on in the same
manner.
To show that the sum of five hundred thousand pounds is more than
sufficient to defray all the expenses of the government, exclusive of
navies and armies, the following estimate is added, for any country, of
the same extent as England.
If a nation choose, it can deduct four per cent. from all offices, and
make one of twenty thousand per annum.
All revenue officers are paid out of the monies they collect, and
therefore, are not in this estimation.
Whoever has observed the manner in which trade and taxes twist
themselves together, must be sensible of the impossibility of separating
them suddenly.
First. Because the articles now on hand are already charged with the
duty, and the reduction cannot take place on the present stock.
In the first place, then, the poor-rates are a direct tax which every
house-keeper feels, and who knows also, to a farthing, the sum which
he pays. The national amount of the whole of the poor-rates is not
positively known, but can be procured. Sir John Sinclair, in his History
of the Revenue has stated it at L2,100,587. A considerable part of
which is expended in litigations, in which the poor, instead of being
relieved, are tormented. The expense, however, is the same to the parish
from whatever cause it arises.
There will then remain one million two hundred and sixty thousand
which, at five souls to each family, amount to two hundred and fifty-two
thousand families, rendered poor from the expense of children and the
weight of taxes.
It is certain, that if the children are provided for, the parents are
relieved of consequence, because it is from the expense of bringing up
children that their poverty arises.
Having thus ascertained the greatest number that can be supposed to need
support on account of young families, I proceed to the mode of relief or
distribution, which is,
By adopting this method, not only the poverty of the parents will be
relieved, but ignorance will be banished from the rising generation, and
the number of poor will hereafter become less, because their abilities,
by the aid of education, will be greater. Many a youth, with good
natural genius, who is apprenticed to a mechanical trade, such as
a carpenter, joiner, millwright, shipwright, blacksmith, etc., is
prevented getting forward the whole of his life from the want of a
little common education when a boy.
I divide age into two classes. First, the approach of age, beginning at
fifty. Secondly, old age commencing at sixty.
At fifty, though the mental faculties of man are in full vigour, and
his judgment better than at any preceding date, the bodily powers for
laborious life are on the decline. He cannot bear the same quantity of
fatigue as at an earlier period. He begins to earn less, and is
less capable of enduring wind and weather; and in those more retired
employments where much sight is required, he fails apace, and sees
himself, like an old horse, beginning to be turned adrift.
To form some judgment of the number of those above fifty years of age,
I have several times counted the persons I met in the streets of London,
men, women, and children, and have generally found that the average is
about one in sixteen or seventeen. If it be said that aged persons
do not come much into the streets, so neither do infants; and a great
proportion of grown children are in schools and in work-shops as
apprentices. Taking, then, sixteen for a divisor, the whole number of
persons in England of fifty years and upwards, of both sexes, rich and
poor, will be four hundred and twenty thousand.
Besides these there will be constantly thrown off from the revolutions
of that wheel which no man can stop nor regulate, a number from every
class of life connected with commerce and adventure.
To provide for all those accidents, and whatever else may befall, I take
the number of persons who, at one time or other of their lives, after
fifty years of age, may feel it necessary or comfortable to be better
supported, than they can support themselves, and that not as a matter of
grace and favour, but of right, at one-third of the whole number, which
is one hundred and forty thousand, as stated in a previous page, and
for whom a distinct provision was proposed to be made. If there be more,
society, notwithstanding the show and pomposity of government, is in a
deplorable condition in England.
Of this one hundred and forty thousand, I take one half, seventy
thousand, to be of the age of fifty and under sixty, and the other half
to be sixty years and upwards. Having thus ascertained the probable
proportion of the number of aged persons, I proceed to the mode of
rendering their condition comfortable, which is:
To pay to every such person of the age of fifty years, and until he
shall arrive at the age of sixty, the sum of six pounds per annum out of
the surplus taxes, and ten pounds per annum during life after the age of
sixty. The expense of which will be,
There will then remain three hundred and sixty thousand pounds out of
the four millions, part of which may be applied as follows:--
After all the above cases are provided for there will still be a number
of families who, though not properly of the class of poor, yet find it
difficult to give education to their children; and such children, under
such a case, would be in a worse condition than if their parents were
actually poor. A nation under a well-regulated government should permit
none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical
government only that requires ignorance for its support.
To allow for each of those children ten shillings a year for the
expense of schooling for six years each, which will give them six months
schooling each year, and half a crown a year for paper and spelling
books.
There will then remain one hundred and ten thousand pounds.
Notwithstanding the great modes of relief which the best instituted and
best principled government may devise, there will be a number of smaller
cases, which it is good policy as well as beneficence in a nation to
consider.
I shall finish this part of the subject with a plan adapted to the
particular condition of a metropolis, such as London.
These circumstances which are the general cause of the little thefts
and pilferings that lead to greater, may be prevented. There yet remain
twenty thousand pounds out of the four millions of surplus taxes, which
with another fund hereafter to be mentioned, amounting to about twenty
thousand pounds more, cannot be better applied than to this purpose. The
plan will then be:
Secondly, To receive all who shall come, without enquiring who or what
they are. The only condition to be, that for so much, or so many hours'
work, each person shall receive so many meals of wholesome food, and a
warm lodging, at least as good as a barrack. That a certain portion of
what each person's work shall be worth shall be reserved, and given to
him or her, on their going away; and that each person shall stay as long
or as short a time, or come as often as he choose, on these conditions.
Allowing that their labour paid but one half the expense of supporting
them, after reserving a portion of their earnings for themselves, the
sum of forty thousand pounds additional would defray all other charges
for even a greater number than six thousand.
I shall now conclude this plan with enumerating the several particulars,
and then proceed to other matters.
Secondly, Provision for two hundred and fifty thousand poor families.
Fourthly, Comfortable provision for one hundred and forty thousand aged
persons.
Eighthly, Employment, at all times, for the casual poor in the cities of
London and Westminster.
By the operation of this plan, the poor laws, those instruments of civil
torture, will be superseded, and the wasteful expense of litigation
prevented. The hearts of the humane will not be shocked by ragged and
hungry children, and persons of seventy and eighty years of age, begging
for bread. The dying poor will not be dragged from place to place to
breathe their last, as a reprisal of parish upon parish. Widows will
have a maintenance for their children, and not be carted away, on the
death of their husbands, like culprits and criminals; and children will
no longer be considered as increasing the distresses of their parents.
The haunts of the wretched will be known, because it will be to their
advantage; and the number of petty crimes, the offspring of distress and
poverty, will be lessened. The poor, as well as the rich, will then be
interested in the support of government, and the cause and apprehension
of riots and tumults will cease.--Ye who sit in ease, and solace
yourselves in plenty, and such there are in Turkey and Russia, as well
as in England, and who say to yourselves, "Are we not well off?" have ye
thought of these things? When ye do, ye will cease to speak and feel for
yourselves alone.
Having now arranged and concluded this subject, I proceed to the next.
Taking the present current expenses at seven millions and an half, which
is the least amount they are now at, there will remain (after the sum of
one million and an half be taken for the new current expenses and four
millions for the before-mentioned service) the sum of two millions; part
of which to be applied as follows:
A part of the army will remain, at least for some years, and also of the
navy, for which a provision is already made in the former part of this
plan of one million, which is almost half a million more than the peace
establishment of the army and navy in the prodigal times of Charles the
Second.
Every year some part of this sum of half a million (I omit the odd seven
thousand pounds for the purpose of keeping the account unembarrassed)
will fall in, and the whole of it in time, as it is on the ground of
life annuities, except the increased pay of twenty-nine thousand
pounds. As it falls in, part of the taxes may be taken off; and as, for
instance, when thirty thousand pounds fall in, the duty on hops may be
wholly taken off; and as other parts fall in, the duties on candles and
soap may be lessened, till at last they will totally cease. There now
remains at least one million and a half of surplus taxes.
The tax on houses and windows is one of those direct taxes, which, like
the poor-rates, is not confounded with trade; and, when taken off, the
relief will be instantly felt. This tax falls heavy on the middle class
of people. The amount of this tax, by the returns of 1788, was:
If this tax be struck off, there will then remain about one million of
surplus taxes; and as it is always proper to keep a sum in reserve, for
incidental matters, it may be best not to extend reductions further in
the first instance, but to consider what may be accomplished by other
modes of reform.
Among the taxes most heavily felt is the commutation tax. I shall
therefore offer a plan for its abolition, by substituting another in its
place, which will effect three objects at once: 1, that of removing
the burthen to where it can best be borne; 2, restoring justice among
families by a distribution of property; 3, extirpating the overgrown
influence arising from the unnatural law of primogeniture, which is
one of the principal sources of corruption at elections. The amount of
commutation tax by the returns of 1788, was L771,657.
When taxes are proposed, the country is amused by the plausible language
of taxing luxuries. One thing is called a luxury at one time, and
something else at another; but the real luxury does not consist in the
article, but in the means of procuring it, and this is always kept out
of sight.
I know not why any plant or herb of the field should be a greater luxury
in one country than another; but an overgrown estate in either is a
luxury at all times, and, as such, is the proper object of taxation. It
is, therefore, right to take those kind tax-making gentlemen up on their
own word, and argue on the principle themselves have laid down, that of
taxing luxuries. If they or their champion, Mr. Burke, who, I fear, is
growing out of date, like the man in armour, can prove that an estate of
twenty, thirty, or forty thousand pounds a year is not a luxury, I will
give up the argument.
Admitting that any annual sum, say, for instance, one thousand pounds,
is necessary or sufficient for the support of a family, consequently the
second thousand is of the nature of a luxury, the third still more so,
and by proceeding on, we shall at last arrive at a sum that may not
improperly be called a prohibitable luxury. It would be impolitic to set
bounds to property acquired by industry, and therefore it is right to
place the prohibition beyond the probable acquisition to which
industry can extend; but there ought to be a limit to property or the
accumulation of it by bequest. It should pass in some other line. The
richest in every nation have poor relations, and those often very near
in consanguinity.
The following table of progressive taxation is constructed on the above
principles, and as a substitute for the commutation tax. It will reach
the point of prohibition by a regular operation, and thereby supersede
the aristocratical law of primogeniture.
TABLE I
A tax on all estates of the clear yearly value of L50,
after deducting the land tax, and up
The foregoing table shows the progression per pound on every progressive
thousand. The following table shows the amount of the tax on every
thousand separately, and in the last column the total amount of all the
separate sums collected.
TABLE II
An estate of:
L 50 per annum at 3d per pound pays L0 12 6
100 " " " " 1 5 0
200 " " " " 2 10 0
300 " " " " 3 15 0
400 " " " " 5 0 0
500 " " " " 7 5 0
After L500, the tax of 6d. per pound takes place on the second L500;
consequently an estate of L1,000 per annum pays L2l, 15s., and so on.
Total amount
For the 1st L500 at 0s 3d per pound L7 5s
2nd " 0 6 14 10 L21 15s
2nd 1000 at 0 9 37 11 59 5
3rd " 1 0 50 0 109 5
(Total amount)
4th 1000 at 1s 6d per pound L75 0s L184 5s
5th " 2 0 100 0 284 5
6th " 3 0 150 0 434 5
7th " 4 0 200 0 634 5
8th " 5 0 250 0 880 5
9th " 6 0 300 0 1100 5
10th " 7 0 350 0 1530 5
11th " 8 0 400 0 1930 5
12th " 9 0 450 0 2380 5
13th " 10 0 500 0 2880 5
14th " 11 0 550 0 3430 5
15th " 12 0 600 0 4030 5
16th " 13 0 650 0 4680 5
17th " 14 0 700 0 5380 5
18th " 15 0 750 0 6130 5
19th " 16 0 800 0 6930 5
20th " 17 0 850 0 7780 5
21st " 18 0 900 0 8680 5
(Total amount)
22nd 1000 at 19s 0d per pound L950 0s L9630 5s
23rd " 20 0 1000 0 10630 5
At the twenty-third thousand the tax becomes 20s. in the pound, and
consequently every thousand beyond that sum can produce no profit but by
dividing the estate. Yet formidable as this tax appears, it will not, I
believe, produce so much as the commutation tax; should it produce more,
it ought to be lowered to that amount upon estates under two or three
thousand a year.
But the chief object of this progressive tax (besides the justice of
rendering taxes more equal than they are) is, as already stated, to
extirpate the overgrown influence arising from the unnatural law of
primogeniture, and which is one of the principal sources of corruption
at elections.
A progressive tax will, in a great measure, effect this object, and that
as a matter of interest to the parties most immediately concerned, as
will be seen by the following table; which shows the net produce upon
every estate, after subtracting the tax. By this it will appear that
after an estate exceeds thirteen or fourteen thousand a year, the
remainder produces but little profit to the holder, and consequently,
Will pass either to the younger children, or to other kindred.
TABLE III
Showing the net produce of every estate from one thousand
to twenty-three thousand pounds a year
There are two classes of people to whom the laws of England are
particularly hostile, and those the most helpless; younger children,
and the poor. Of the former I have just spoken; of the latter I shall
mention one instance out of the many that might be produced, and with
which I shall close this subject.
Having now finished this subject, I shall bring the several particulars
into one view, and then proceed to other matters.
3. Annuity of six pounds (per annum) each for all poor persons, decayed
tradesmen, and others (supposed seventy thousand) of the age of fifty
years, and until sixty.
4. Annuity of ten pounds each for life for all poor persons, decayed
tradesmen, and others (supposed seventy thousand) of the age of sixty
years.
8. Employment at all times for the casual poor in the cities of London
and Westminster.
Second Enumeration
10. Allowance of three shillings per week for life to fifteen thousand
disbanded soldiers, and a proportionate allowance to the officers of the
disbanded corps.
12. The same allowance to the disbanded navy, and the same increase of
pay, as to the army.
There yet remains, as already stated, one million of surplus taxes. Some
part of this will be required for circumstances that do not immediately
present themselves, and such part as shall not be wanted, will admit of
a further reduction of taxes equal to that amount.
Among the claims that justice requires to be made, the condition of the
inferior revenue-officers will merit attention. It is a reproach to
any government to waste such an immensity of revenue in sinecures and
nominal and unnecessary places and officers, and not allow even a decent
livelihood to those on whom the labour falls. The salary of the inferior
officers of the revenue has stood at the petty pittance of less than
fifty pounds a year for upwards of one hundred years. It ought to be
seventy. About one hundred and twenty thousand pounds applied to this
purpose, will put all those salaries in a decent condition.
This was proposed to be done almost twenty years ago, but the
treasury-board then in being, startled at it, as it might lead to
similar expectations from the army and navy; and the event was, that the
King, or somebody for him, applied to parliament to have his own salary
raised an hundred thousand pounds a year, which being done, every thing
else was laid aside.
Ye simple men on both sides the question, do you not see through this
courtly craft? If ye can be kept disputing and wrangling about church
and meeting, ye just answer the purpose of every courtier, who lives the
while on the spoils of the taxes, and laughs at your credulity. Every
religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that
instructs him to be bad.
There now remains only the national debt to be considered. In the year
1789, the interest, exclusive of the tontine, was L9,150,138. How much
the capital has been reduced since that time the minister best knows.
But after paying the interest, abolishing the tax on houses and windows,
the commutation tax, and the poor-rates; and making all the provisions
for the poor, for the education of children, the support of the aged,
the disbanded part of the army and navy, and increasing the pay of the
remainder, there will be a surplus of one million.
The present scheme of paying off the national debt appears to me,
speaking as an indifferent person, to be an ill-concerted, if not a
fallacious job. The burthen of the national debt consists not in its
being so many millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity
of taxes collected every year to pay the interest. If this quantity
continues the same, the burthen of the national debt is the same to all
intents and purposes, be the capital more or less. The only knowledge
which the public can have of the reduction of the debt, must be through
the reduction of taxes for paying the interest. The debt, therefore,
is not reduced one farthing to the public by all the millions that
have been paid; and it would require more money now to purchase up the
capital, than when the scheme began.
I was then in America. The war was over; and though resentment had
ceased, memory was still alive.
When the news of the coalition arrived, though it was a matter of no
concern to I felt it as a man. It had something in it which shocked, by
publicly sporting with decency, if not with principle. It was impudence
in Lord North; it was a want of firmness in Mr. Fox.
Mr. Pitt was, at that time, what may be called a maiden character in
politics. So far from being hackneyed, he appeared not to be initiated
into the first mysteries of court intrigue. Everything was in his
favour. Resentment against the coalition served as friendship to him,
and his ignorance of vice was credited for virtue. With the return
of peace, commerce and prosperity would rise of itself; yet even this
increase was thrown to his account.
When he came to the helm, the storm was over, and he had nothing to
interrupt his course. It required even ingenuity to be wrong, and
he succeeded. A little time showed him the same sort of man as his
predecessors had been. Instead of profiting by those errors which had
accumulated a burthen of taxes unparalleled in the world, he sought,
I might almost say, he advertised for enemies, and provoked means to
increase taxation. Aiming at something, he knew not what, he ransacked
Europe and India for adventures, and abandoning the fair pretensions he
began with, he became the knight-errant of modern times.
Nine millions of dead taxes is a serious thing; and this not only for
bad, but in a great measure for foreign government. By putting the power
of making war into the hands of the foreigners who came for what they
could get, little else was to be expected than what has happened.
Reasons are already advanced in this work, showing that whatever the
reforms in the taxes may be, they ought to be made in the current
expenses of government, and not in the part applied to the interest
of the national debt. By remitting the taxes of the poor, they will be
totally relieved, and all discontent will be taken away; and by striking
off such of the taxes as are already mentioned, the nation will more
than recover the whole expense of the mad American war.
Instead of taxing the capital, the best method would be to tax the
interest by some progressive ratio, and to lessen the public taxes in
the same proportion as the interest diminished.
Suppose the interest was taxed one halfpenny in the pound the first
year, a penny more the second, and to proceed by a certain ratio to be
determined upon, always less than any other tax upon property. Such
a tax would be subtracted from the interest at the time of payment,
without any expense of collection.
One halfpenny in the pound would lessen the interest and consequently
the taxes, twenty thousand pounds. The tax on wagons amounts to this
sum, and this tax might be taken off the first year. The second year the
tax on female servants, or some other of the like amount might also be
taken off, and by proceeding in this manner, always applying the tax
raised from the property of the debt toward its extinction, and not
carry it to the current services, it would liberate itself.
The stockholders, notwithstanding this tax, would pay less taxes than
they do now. What they would save by the extinction of the poor-rates,
and the tax on houses and windows, and the commutation tax, would
be considerably greater than what this tax, slow, but certain in its
operation, amounts to.
The time is not very distant when England will laugh at itself for
sending to Holland, Hanover, Zell, or Brunswick for men, at the expense
of a million a year, who understood neither her laws, her language, nor
her interest, and whose capacities would scarcely have fitted them for
the office of a parish constable. If government could be trusted to such
hands, it must be some easy and simple thing indeed, and materials fit
for all the purposes may be found in every town and village in England.
When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy;
neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are
empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the
taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I
am the friend of its happiness: when these things can be said, then may
that country boast its constitution and its government.
Within the space of a few years we have seen two revolutions, those
of America and France. In the former, the contest was long, and
the conflict severe; in the latter, the nation acted with such a
consolidated impulse, that having no foreign enemy to contend with, the
revolution was complete in power the moment it appeared. From both those
instances it is evident, that the greatest forces that can be brought
into the field of revolutions, are reason and common interest. Where
these can have the opportunity of acting, opposition dies with fear, or
crumbles away by conviction. It is a great standing which they have now
universally obtained; and we may hereafter hope to see revolutions, or
changes in governments, produced with the same quiet operation by which
any measure, determinable by reason and discussion, is accomplished.
I presume, that though all the people of England pay taxes, not an
hundredth part of them are electors, and the members of one of the
houses of parliament represent nobody but themselves. There is,
therefore, no power but the voluntary will of the people that has a
right to act in any matter respecting a general reform; and by the same
right that two persons can confer on such a subject, a thousand may.
The object, in all such preliminary proceedings, is to find out what the
general sense of a nation is, and to be governed by it. If it prefer a
bad or defective government to a reform or choose to pay ten times more
taxes than there is any occasion for, it has a right so to do; and so
long as the majority do not impose conditions on the minority, different
from what they impose upon themselves, though there may be much error,
there is no injustice. Neither will the error continue long. Reason and
discussion will soon bring things right, however wrong they may begin.
By such a process no tumult is to be apprehended. The poor, in all
countries, are naturally both peaceable and grateful in all reforms in
which their interest and happiness is included. It is only by neglecting
and rejecting them that they become tumultuous.
The objects that now press on the public attention are, the French
revolution, and the prospect of a general revolution in governments.
Of all nations in Europe there is none so much interested in the French
revolution as England. Enemies for ages, and that at a vast expense,
and without any national object, the opportunity now presents itself of
amicably closing the scene, and joining their efforts to reform the rest
of Europe. By doing this they will not only prevent the further effusion
of blood, and increase of taxes, but be in a condition of getting rid
of a considerable part of their present burthens, as has been already
stated. Long experience however has shown, that reforms of this kind are
not those which old governments wish to promote, and therefore it is
to nations, and not to such governments, that these matters present
themselves.
First, That no new ship of war shall be built by any power in Europe,
themselves included.
Second, That all the navies now in existence shall be put back, suppose
to one-tenth of their present force. This will save to France and
England, at least two millions sterling annually to each, and their
relative force be in the same proportion as it is now. If men will
permit themselves to think, as rational beings ought to think,
nothing can appear more ridiculous and absurd, exclusive of all moral
reflections, than to be at the expense of building navies, filling them
with men, and then hauling them into the ocean, to try which can
sink each other fastest. Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with
infinitely more advantage, than any victory with all its expense. But
this, though it best answers the purpose of nations, does not that
of court governments, whose habited policy is pretence for taxation,
places, and offices.
With how much more glory, and advantage to itself, does a nation act,
when it exerts its powers to rescue the world from bondage, and to
create itself friends, than when it employs those powers to increase
ruin, desolation, and misery. The horrid scene that is now acting by the
English government in the East-Indies, is fit only to be told of Goths
and Vandals, who, destitute of principle, robbed and tortured the world
they were incapable of enjoying.
Will any man say, in the present excess of taxation, falling so heavily
on the poor, that a remission of five pounds annually of taxes to one
hundred and four thousand poor families is not a good thing? Will he say
that a remission of seven pounds annually to one hundred thousand other
poor families--of eight pounds annually to another hundred thousand poor
families, and of ten pounds annually to fifty thousand poor and widowed
families, are not good things? And, to proceed a step further in this
climax, will he say that to provide against the misfortunes to which
all human life is subject, by securing six pounds annually for all poor,
distressed, and reduced persons of the age of fifty and until sixty, and
of ten pounds annually after sixty, is not a good thing?
Throughout this work, various and numerous as the subjects are, which
I have taken up and investigated, there is only a single paragraph
upon religion, viz. "that every religion is good that teaches man to be
good."
Why may we not suppose, that the great Father of all is pleased with
variety of devotion; and that the greatest offence we can act, is that
by which we seek to torment and render each other miserable? For my own
part, I am fully satisfied that what I am now doing, with an endeavour
to conciliate mankind, to render their condition happy, to unite nations
that have hitherto been enemies, and to extirpate the horrid practice of
war, and break the chains of slavery and oppression is acceptable in his
sight, and being the best service I can perform, I act it cheerfully.
I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points,
think alike who think at all. It is only those who have not thought that
appear to agree. It is in this case as with what is called the British
constitution. It has been taken for granted to be good, and encomiums
have supplied the place of proof. But when the nation comes to examine
into its principles and the abuses it admits, it will be found to have
more defects than I have pointed out in this work and the former.
I have now gone through the whole of the subject, at least, as far as it
appears to me at present. It has been my intention for the five years I
have been in Europe, to offer an address to the people of England on
the subject of government, if the opportunity presented itself before I
returned to America. Mr. Burke has thrown it in my way, and I thank
him. On a certain occasion, three years ago, I pressed him to propose a
national convention, to be fairly elected, for the purpose of taking
the state of the nation into consideration; but I found, that however
strongly the parliamentary current was then setting against the party
he acted with, their policy was to keep every thing within that field
of corruption, and trust to accidents. Long experience had shown that
parliaments would follow any change of ministers, and on this they
rested their hopes and their expectations.
Some gentlemen have affected to call the principles upon which this
work and the former part of Rights of Man are founded, "a new-fangled
doctrine." The question is not whether those principles are new or old,
but whether they are right or wrong. Suppose the former, I will show
their effect by a figure easily understood.
APPENDIX
As the publication of this work has been delayed beyond the time
intended, I think it not improper, all circumstances considered, to
state the causes that have occasioned delay.
The reader will probably observe, that some parts in the plan contained
in this work for reducing the taxes, and certain parts in Mr. Pitt's
speech at the opening of the present session, Tuesday, January 31, are
so much alike as to induce a belief, that either the author had taken
the hint from Mr. Pitt, or Mr. Pitt from the author.--I will first point
out the parts that are similar, and then state such circumstances as I
am acquainted with, leaving the reader to make his own conclusion.
Every one of those specific taxes are a part of the plan contained in
this work, and proposed also to be taken off. Mr. Pitt's plan, it is
true, goes no further than to a reduction of three hundred and twenty
thousand pounds; and the reduction proposed in this work, to nearly six
millions. I have made my calculations on only sixteen millions and an
half of revenue, still asserting that it was "very nearly, if not quite,
seventeen millions." Mr. Pitt states it at 16,690,000. I know enough of
the matter to say, that he has not overstated it. Having thus given the
particulars, which correspond in this work and his speech, I will state
a chain of circumstances that may lead to some explanation.
The first hint for lessening the taxes, and that as a consequence
flowing from the French revolution, is to be found in the Address and
Declaration of the Gentlemen who met at the Thatched-House Tavern,
August 20, 1791. Among many other particulars stated in that Address, is
the following, put as an interrogation to the government opposers of the
French Revolution. "Are they sorry that the pretence for new oppressive
taxes, and the occasion for continuing many old taxes will be at an
end?"
What was only hinted in the Address and Declaration respecting taxes and
principles of government, will be found reduced to a regular system in
this work. But as Mr. Pitt's speech contains some of the same things
respecting taxes, I now come to give the circumstances before alluded
to.
The case is: This work was intended to be published just before the
meeting of Parliament, and for that purpose a considerable part of
the copy was put into the printer's hands in September, and all the
remaining copy, which contains the part to which Mr. Pitt's speech
is similar, was given to him full six weeks before the meeting of
Parliament, and he was informed of the time at which it was to appear.
He had composed nearly the whole about a fortnight before the time of
Parliament meeting, and had given me a proof of the next sheet. It was
then in sufficient forwardness to be out at the time proposed, as two
other sheets were ready for striking off. I had before told him, that
if he thought he should be straitened for time, I could get part of
the work done at another press, which he desired me not to do. In this
manner the work stood on the Tuesday fortnight preceding the meeting of
Parliament, when all at once, without any previous intimation, though I
had been with him the evening before, he sent me, by one of his
workmen, all the remaining copy, declining to go on with the work on any
consideration.
His refusal to complete the work (which he could not purchase) obliged
me to seek for another printer, and this of consequence would throw
the publication back till after the meeting of Parliament, otherways it
would have appeared that Mr. Pitt had only taken up a part of the plan
which I had more fully stated.
Whether that gentleman, or any other, had seen the work, or any part of
it, is more than I have authority to say. But the manner in which the
work was returned, and the particular time at which this was done, and
that after the offers he had made, are suspicious circumstances. I know
what the opinion of booksellers and publishers is upon such a case, but
as to my own opinion, I choose to make no declaration. There are many
ways by which proof sheets may be procured by other persons before a
work publicly appears; to which I shall add a certain circumstance,
which is,
I have now stated the particulars which occasioned the delay, from the
proposal to purchase, to the refusal to print. If all the Gentlemen
are innocent, it is very unfortunate for them that such a variety of
suspicious circumstances should, without any design, arrange themselves
together.
Having now finished this part, I will conclude with stating another
circumstance.
Thomas Paine
[Footnote 1: The main and uniform maxim of the judges is, the greater the truth
the greater the libel.]
[Footnote 2: Since writing the above, two other places occur in Mr. Burke's
pamphlet in which the name of the Bastille is mentioned, but in the same
manner. In the one he introduces it in a sort of obscure question, and
asks: "Will any ministers who now serve such a king, with but a decent
appearance of respect, cordially obey the orders of those whom but the
other day, in his name, they had committed to the Bastille?" In the
other the taking it is mentioned as implying criminality in the French
guards, who assisted in demolishing it. "They have not," says he,
"forgot the taking the king's castles at Paris." This is Mr. Burke, who
pretends to write on constitutional freedom.]
[Footnote 8: When the English Minister, Mr. Pitt, mentions the French finances
again in the English Parliament, it would be well that he noticed this
as an example.]
[Footnote 9: Mr. Burke, (and I must take the liberty of telling him that he is
very unacquainted with French affairs), speaking upon this subject,
says, "The first thing that struck me in calling the States-General,
was a great departure from the ancient course";--and he soon after says,
"From the moment I read the list, I saw distinctly, and very nearly as
it has happened, all that was to follow."--Mr. Burke certainly did not
see an that was to follow. I endeavoured to impress him, as well before
as after the States-General met, that there would be a revolution; but
was not able to make him see it, neither would he believe it. How then
he could distinctly see all the parts, when the whole was out of sight,
is beyond my comprehension. And with respect to the "departure from the
ancient course," besides the natural weakness of the remark, it shows
that he is unacquainted with circumstances. The departure was necessary,
from the experience had upon it, that the ancient course was a bad one.
The States-General of 1614 were called at the commencement of the civil
war in the minority of Louis XIII.; but by the class of arranging them
by orders, they increased the confusion they were called to compose. The
author of L'Intrigue du Cabinet, (Intrigue of the Cabinet), who
wrote before any revolution was thought of in France, speaking of the
States-General of 1614, says, "They held the public in suspense five
months; and by the questions agitated therein, and the heat with which
they were put, it appears that the great (les grands) thought more to
satisfy their particular passions, than to procure the goods of the
nation; and the whole time passed away in altercations, ceremonies and
parade."--L'Intrigue du Cabinet, vol. i. p. 329.]
[Footnote 10: There is a single idea, which, if it strikes rightly upon the mind,
either in a legal or a religious sense, will prevent any man or any body
of men, or any government, from going wrong on the subject of religion;
which is, that before any human institutions of government were known in
the world, there existed, if I may so express it, a compact between
God and man, from the beginning of time: and that as the relation and
condition which man in his individual person stands in towards his Maker
cannot be changed by any human laws or human authority, that religious
devotion, which is a part of this compact, cannot so much as be made a
subject of human laws; and that all laws must conform themselves to this
prior existing compact, and not assume to make the compact conform to
the laws, which, besides being human, are subsequent thereto. The first
act of man, when he looked around and saw himself a creature which he
did not make, and a world furnished for his reception, must have been
devotion; and devotion must ever continue sacred to every individual
man, as it appears, right to him; and governments do mischief by
interfering.]
[Footnote 11: See this work, Part I starting at line number 254.--N.B. Since the
taking of the Bastille, the occurrences have been published: but the
matters recorded in this narrative, are prior to that period; and some
of them, as may be easily seen, can be but very little known.]
[Footnote 15: Whether the English commerce does not bring in money, or whether the
government sends it out after it is brought in, is a matter which the
parties concerned can best explain; but that the deficiency exists, is
not in the power of either to disprove. While Dr. Price, Mr. Eden, (now
Auckland), Mr. Chalmers, and others, were debating whether the quantity
of money in England was greater or less than at the Revolution, the
circumstance was not adverted to, that since the Revolution, there
cannot have been less than four hundred millions sterling imported into
Europe; and therefore the quantity in England ought at least to have
been four times greater than it was at the Revolution, to be on a
proportion with Europe. What England is now doing by paper, is what she
would have been able to do by solid money, if gold and silver had come
into the nation in the proportion it ought, or had not been sent out;
and she is endeavouring to restore by paper, the balance she has lost by
money. It is certain, that the gold and silver which arrive annually
in the register-ships to Spain and Portugal, do not remain in those
countries. Taking the value half in gold and half in silver, it is about
four hundred tons annually; and from the number of ships and galloons
employed in the trade of bringing those metals from South-America to
Portugal and Spain, the quantity sufficiently proves itself, without
referring to the registers.
[Footnote 18: The whole amount of the assessed taxes of France, for the present
year, is three hundred millions of francs, which is twelve millions
and a half sterling; and the incidental taxes are estimated at three
millions, making in the whole fifteen millions and a half; which among
twenty-four millions of people, is not quite thirteen shillings per
head. France has lessened her taxes since the revolution, nearly nine
millions sterling annually. Before the revolution, the city of Paris
paid a duty of upwards of thirty per cent. on all articles brought into
the city. This tax was collected at the city gates. It was taken off on
the first of last May, and the gates taken down.]
[Footnote 19: What was called the livre rouge, or the red book, in France, was not
exactly similar to the Court Calendar in England; but it sufficiently
showed how a great part of the taxes was lavished.]
[Footnote 24: It is scarcely possible to touch on any subject, that will not
suggest an allusion to some corruption in governments. The simile of
"fortifications," unfortunately involves with it a circumstance, which
is directly in point with the matter above alluded to.]
Among the numerous instances of abuse which have been acted or protected
by governments, ancient or modern, there is not a greater than that of
quartering a man and his heirs upon the public, to be maintained at its
expense.
Humanity dictates a provision for the poor; but by what right, moral or
political, does any government assume to say, that the person called
the Duke of Richmond, shall be maintained by the public? Yet, if
common report is true, not a beggar in London can purchase his wretched
pittance of coal, without paying towards the civil list of the Duke of
Richmond. Were the whole produce of this imposition but a shilling a
year, the iniquitous principle would be still the same; but when it
amounts, as it is said to do, to no less than twenty thousand pounds per
annum, the enormity is too serious to be permitted to remain. This is
one of the effects of monarchy and aristocracy.
[Footnote 26: When I saw Mr. Pitt's mode of estimating the balance of trade, in
one of his parliamentary speeches, he appeared to me to know nothing
of the nature and interest of commerce; and no man has more wantonly
tortured it than himself. During a period of peace it has been havocked
with the calamities of war. Three times has it been thrown into
stagnation, and the vessels unmanned by impressing, within less than
four years of peace.]
[Footnote 27: Rev. William Knowle, master of the grammar school of Thetford, in
Norfolk.]
[Footnote 28: Politics and self-interest have been so uniformly connected that
the world, from being so often deceived, has a right to be suspicious of
public characters, but with regard to myself I am perfectly easy on
this head. I did not, at my first setting out in public life, nearly
seventeen years ago, turn my thoughts to subjects of government from
motives of interest, and my conduct from that moment to this proves the
fact. I saw an opportunity in which I thought I could do some good, and
I followed exactly what my heart dictated. I neither read books, nor
studied other people's opinion. I thought for myself. The case was
this:--
When the war ended I went from Philadelphia to Borden-Town, on the east
bank of the Delaware, where I have a small place. Congress was at this
time at Prince-Town, fifteen miles distant, and General Washington
had taken his headquarters at Rocky Hill, within the neighbourhood of
Congress, for the purpose of resigning up his commission (the object
for which he accepted it being accomplished), and of retiring to private
life. While he was on this business he wrote me the letter which I here
subjoin:
"I have learned since I have been at this place that you are at
Borden-Town. Whether for the sake of retirement or economy I know not.
Be it for either, for both, or whatever it may, if you will come to this
place, and partake with me, I shall be exceedingly happy to see you at
it.
G. Washington."
During the war, in the latter end of the year 1780, I formed to myself a
design of coming over to England, and communicated it to General Greene,
who was then in Philadelphia on his route to the southward, General
Washington being then at too great a distance to communicate with
immediately. I was strongly impressed with the idea that if I could get
over to England without being known, and only remain in safety till I
could get out a publication, that I could open the eyes of the country
with respect to the madness and stupidity of its Government. I saw that
the parties in Parliament had pitted themselves as far as they could go,
and could make no new impressions on each other. General Greene entered
fully into my views, but the affair of Arnold and Andre happening just
after, he changed his mind, under strong apprehensions for my safety,
wrote very pressingly to me from Annapolis, in Maryland, to give up
the design, which, with some reluctance, I did. Soon after this I
accompanied Colonel Lawrens, son of Mr. Lawrens, who was then in the
Tower, to France on business from Congress. We landed at L'orient, and
while I remained there, he being gone forward, a circumstance occurred
that renewed my former design. An English packet from Falmouth to
New York, with the Government dispatches on board, was brought into
L'orient. That a packet should be taken is no extraordinary thing, but
that the dispatches should be taken with it will scarcely be credited,
as they are always slung at the cabin window in a bag loaded with
cannon-ball, and ready to be sunk at a moment. The fact, however, is
as I have stated it, for the dispatches came into my hands, and I
read them. The capture, as I was informed, succeeded by the following
stratagem:--The captain of the "Madame" privateer, who spoke English, on
coming up with the packet, passed himself for the captain of an English
frigate, and invited the captain of the packet on board, which, when
done, he sent some of his own hands back, and he secured the mail. But
be the circumstance of the capture what it may, I speak with certainty
as to the Government dispatches. They were sent up to Paris to Count
Vergennes, and when Colonel Lawrens and myself returned to America we
took the originals to Congress.
By these dispatches I saw into the stupidity of the English Cabinet far
more than I otherwise could have done, and I renewed my former design.
But Colonel Lawrens was so unwilling to return alone, more especially
as, among other matters, we had a charge of upwards of two hundred
thousand pounds sterling in money, that I gave in to his wishes, and
finally gave up my plan. But I am now certain that if I could have
executed it that it would not have been altogether unsuccessful.]
[Footnote 29: It is difficult to account for the origin of charter and corporation
towns, unless we suppose them to have arisen out of, or been connected
with, some species of garrison service. The times in which they began
justify this idea. The generality of those towns have been garrisons,
and the corporations were charged with the care of the gates of the
towns, when no military garrison was present. Their refusing or granting
admission to strangers, which has produced the custom of giving,
selling, and buying freedom, has more of the nature of garrison
authority than civil government. Soldiers are free of all corporations
throughout the nation, by the same propriety that every soldier is
free of every garrison, and no other persons are. He can follow any
employment, with the permission of his officers, in any corporation
towns throughout the nation.]
[Footnote 30: See Sir John Sinclair's History of the Revenue. The land-tax in 1646
was L2,473,499.]
[Footnote 31: Several of the court newspapers have of late made frequent mention
of Wat Tyler. That his memory should be traduced by court sycophants and
an those who live on the spoil of a public is not to be wondered at. He
was, however, the means of checking the rage and injustice of taxation
in his time, and the nation owed much to his valour. The history is
concisely this:--In the time of Richard Ii. a poll tax was levied of one
shilling per head upon every person in the nation of whatever estate or
condition, on poor as well as rich, above the age of fifteen years. If
any favour was shown in the law it was to the rich rather than to the
poor, as no person could be charged more than twenty shillings for
himself, family and servants, though ever so numerous; while all other
families, under the number of twenty were charged per head. Poll taxes
had always been odious, but this being also oppressive and unjust, it
excited as it naturally must, universal detestation among the poor and
middle classes. The person known by the name of Wat Tyler, whose proper
name was Walter, and a tiler by trade, lived at Deptford. The gatherer
of the poll tax, on coming to his house, demanded tax for one of
his daughters, whom Tyler declared was under the age of fifteen. The
tax-gatherer insisted on satisfying himself, and began an indecent
examination of the girl, which, enraging the father, he struck him with
a hammer that brought him to the ground, and was the cause of his
death. This circumstance served to bring the discontent to an issue. The
inhabitants of the neighbourhood espoused the cause of Tyler, who in a
few days was joined, according to some histories, by upwards of fifty
thousand men, and chosen their chief. With this force he marched
to London, to demand an abolition of the tax and a redress of other
grievances. The Court, finding itself in a forlorn condition, and,
unable to make resistance, agreed, with Richard at its head, to hold
a conference with Tyler in Smithfield, making many fair professions,
courtier-like, of its dispositions to redress the oppressions. While
Richard and Tyler were in conversation on these matters, each being on
horseback, Walworth, then Mayor of London, and one of the creatures of
the Court, watched an opportunity, and like a cowardly assassin, stabbed
Tyler with a dagger, and two or three others falling upon him, he
was instantly sacrificed. Tyler appears to have been an intrepid
disinterested man with respect to himself. All his proposals made to
Richard were on a more just and public ground than those which had
been made to John by the Barons, and notwithstanding the sycophancy of
historians and men like Mr. Burke, who seek to gloss over a base action
of the Court by traducing Tyler, his fame will outlive their falsehood.
If the Barons merited a monument to be erected at Runnymede, Tyler
merited one in Smithfield.]
[Footnote 33: Charles, like his predecessors and successors, finding that war was
the harvest of governments, engaged in a war with the Dutch, the expense
of which increased the annual expenditure to L1,800,000 as stated under
the date of 1666; but the peace establishment was but L1,200,000.]
[Footnote 34: Poor-rates began about the time of Henry VIII., when the taxes began
to increase, and they have increased as the taxes increased ever since.]
[Footnote 35: Reckoning the taxes by families, five to a family, each family pays
on an average L12 7s. 6d. per annum. To this sum are to be added the
poor-rates. Though all pay taxes in the articles they consume, all do
not pay poor-rates. About two millions are exempted: some as not being
house-keepers, others as not being able, and the poor themselves
who receive the relief. The average, therefore, of poor-rates on the
remaining number, is forty shillings for every family of five persons,
which make the whole average amount of taxes and rates L14 17s. 6d. For
six persons L17 17s. For seven persons L2O 16s. 6d.
The average of taxes in America, under the new or representative system
of government, including the interest of the debt contracted in the
war, and taking the population at four millions of souls, which it now
amounts to, and it is daily increasing, is five shillings per head,
men, women, and children. The difference, therefore, between the two
governments is as under:
England America
L s. d. L s. d.
For a family of five persons 14 17 6 1 5 0
For a family of six persons 17 17 0 1 10 0
For a family of seven persons 20 16 6 1 15 0
[Footnote 36: Public schools do not answer the general purpose of the poor.
They are chiefly in corporation towns from which the country towns and
villages are excluded, or, if admitted, the distance occasions a great
loss of time. Education, to be useful to the poor, should be on the
spot, and the best method, I believe, to accomplish this is to enable
the parents to pay the expenses themselves. There are always persons of
both sexes to be found in every village, especially when growing into
years, capable of such an undertaking. Twenty children at ten shillings
each (and that not more than six months each year) would be as much as
some livings amount to in the remotest parts of England, and there are
often distressed clergymen's widows to whom such an income would be
acceptable. Whatever is given on this account to children answers two
purposes. To them it is education--to those who educate them it is a
livelihood.]
[Footnote 37: The tax on beer brewed for sale, from which the aristocracy are
exempt, is almost one million more than the present commutation tax,
being by the returns of 1788, L1,666,152--and, consequently, they ought
to take on themselves the amount of the commutation tax, as they are
already exempted from one which is almost a million greater.]
[Footnote 39: When enquiries are made into the condition of the poor, various
degrees of distress will most probably be found, to render a different
arrangement preferable to that which is already proposed. Widows with
families will be in greater want than where there are husbands living.
There is also a difference in the expense of living in different
counties: and more so in fuel.
This arrangement amounts to the same sum as stated in this work, Part
II, line number 1068, including the L250,000 for education; but it
provides (including the aged people) for four hundred and four thousand
families, which is almost one third of an the families in England.]
[Footnote 40: I know it is the opinion of many of the most enlightened characters
in France (there always will be those who see further into events than
others), not only among the general mass of citizens, but of many of the
principal members of the former National Assembly, that the monarchical
plan will not continue many years in that country. They have found out,
that as wisdom cannot be made hereditary, power ought not; and that, for
a man to merit a million sterling a year from a nation, he ought to have
a mind capable of comprehending from an atom to a universe, which, if he
had, he would be above receiving the pay. But they wished not to appear
to lead the nation faster than its own reason and interest dictated. In
all the conversations where I have been present upon this subject, the
idea always was, that when such a time, from the general opinion of the
nation, shall arrive, that the honourable and liberal method would be,
to make a handsome present in fee simple to the person, whoever he may
be, that shall then be in the monarchical office, and for him to retire
to the enjoyment of private life, possessing his share of general rights
and privileges, and to be no more accountable to the public for his time
and his conduct than any other citizen.]
[Footnote 41: The gentleman who signed the address and declaration as chairman of
the meeting, Mr. Horne Tooke, being generally supposed to be the person
who drew it up, and having spoken much in commendation of it, has
been jocularly accused of praising his own work. To free him from this
embarrassment, and to save him the repeated trouble of mentioning the
author, as he has not failed to do, I make no hesitation in saying,
that as the opportunity of benefiting by the French Revolution easily
occurred to me, I drew up the publication in question, and showed it to
him and some other gentlemen, who, fully approving it, held a meeting
for the purpose of making it public, and subscribed to the amount of
fifty guineas to defray the expense of advertising. I believe there
are at this time, in England, a greater number of men acting on
disinterested principles, and determined to look into the nature and
practices of government themselves, and not blindly trust, as
has hitherto been the case, either to government generally, or to
parliaments, or to parliamentary opposition, than at any former period.
Had this been done a century ago, corruption and taxation had not
arrived to the height they are now at.]
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Writings of Thomas Paine, Volume II, by
Thomas Paine
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